K.J. Charles's Reviews > The House of Footsteps

Gothic novel aiming at an MR James vibe. Great set up: MC is art valuer, goes to spooky isolated house, discovers all the art is of horrific medieval torture and also there's a scary butler, brooding master of the house, and mysterious woman in the library. Weirdness ensues.

Sadly it doesn't really live up to itself. Partly this is because the MC is far too passive. He doesn't confront the strange footsteps, he takes forever to ask questions, he stays static. I know the Gothic is very much about being trapped in a house, and the dream/halluciantion/shifting reality feelings he has are well done. But nevertheless, we needed forward motion, and every time it looks like he's going to discover something or do something, or even *have the entire plot explained to him* he pulls back and does nothing.

(view spoiler)[In particular, the point where he and Victor have sex. This looked like the book was about to accelerate into *something*--a love/sex triangle with Amy, a redemptive or destructive relationship with Victor, blackmail, pages of kinky sex, MC being lured into being part of Victor's dark deeds, literally anything would have done me as long as it was something. Instead...he feels a bit embarrassed and doesn't do it again. There are no consequences. Wtf. There aren't even any real consequences to him killing two people, which really gets handwaved in the plot. (hide spoiler)]

This is, in fairness, the effect the book is going for with the overall story, where the house is in a weird timeless place, but for me, tbh, it ended up feeling like a lot of pages of something being about to happen and then not.

Basically if you're going for MR James style terrifying allusiveness you need to be really good at it, otherwise it's just 'not explaining'. I would have been totally on for delving into the dark horrific experiments or evil sex games or any of the things this promised but didn't really deliver. Maybe I'm just melodramatic.

Moreover, and this is entirely on the publisher not the author, but the blurb compares it to The Haunting of Hill House, a book so purely terrifying that, having read it in my flat on my own, I literally had to go and stay the night with my mum, at the age of 25. Senator, you're no Haunting of Hill House.