Horror Review: Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone

Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone by Stefan Kiesbye
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Your House is On Fire, Your Children All Gone caught my eye with its title and fittingly creepy cover. But often a cover deceives me. This one delivers on the creep factor and is a quietly dark, infinitely disturbing book. Each chapter is told by one of five friends as they’re coming of age in an isolated, superstitious small town, in each chapter they either do something horribly disturbing or find out an equally disturbing secret about an adult in their life. Each story builds on the dread and horror of the previous tale. I had to read the book in dribs and drabs due to real life and would recommend reading it cover to cover if your short-term memory is non-existent, like mine. I found myself getting a little mixed up about who did what horrible thing because well . . .


It’s not a big deal, really, because all of these kids and people are pretty awful, in the most deliciously devious readable way, of course.

A few reviews have said this book is slow and boring and I’m the first one to admit a book is boring me to death (most do) but I didn’t find that to be the case with this one once I got past the beginning. True, the horror is more of the quiet type, but that doesn’t dull its effect at all. Horrible things are done and told in such a dispassionate way that it all seems normal and you are left to dwell on that.

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