Well… justice for Elijah they were the only character  throughout the whole book I cared. The MC really said family trauma? yea defo passing it to my kid even if I don’t think i am.

Something I never expected.  Soo slow and eerie.  It’s just wow twist and turns that jerked me around then the final twist took me out. 

There were pieces of this that I wish I could erase from my memory. Some graphic sexual stuff that was unpleasant for me and not at all titillating. And it didn’t ALL feel necessary to the story. 

Otherwise, I loved this. 

Model Home tells the story of three siblings, haunted by the horrors they were subject to in their childhood home. In the wake of their parents' death, the siblings are forced to confront the memories that plague them.

Rivers Solomon weaves a bleak and devastating tale of trauma and grief, and how such grief causes not only the trauma to resurface but also all that you wished could be. Each sibling is continually affected by the events that transpired, haunted in difference ways: Ezri, a non binary parent with a host of mental health diagnoses, whose teenage daughter has to fend for herself when they dissociate; Eve, a wise and bossy perfectionist yearning for control; Emmanuel, masquerading as functioning, even successful, despite being a neurotic clusterfuck of emotion. No one believed them when they said their house was haunted. No one helped. No one came to save them. The siblings splintered due to their childhood experiences, suffering with mental and physical scars. In the wake of grief, a family can fracture and re-form. As I'm discovering in my own grief, you discover things you wish you knew earlier, and things you wish you could forget. Model Home tells a story of generational trauma, history repeating itself, and what can be learnt from examining our ghosts. Though the torment can be familiar, especially with a mother for whom you were never good enough, we realise that anyone has the capacity to hurt us and it's important to reckon with the intersection of torment this young, black family was subject to. It's devastating and cruel and destructive. It's pervasive, even if you didn't know what it was. It haunts. It leeches away life. Does it feed on what it takes? In the end, what's left of us? I deeply understand the doubt of not knowing what's real, the fear of being unable to remember, and the hurt when people blame you. Things may go bump in the night, if only they stayed there.

"Instead, I’m a vessel of ghosts, the me’s that died, the me’s that never could be, unbound by time, by social graces."

It's important to note the serious issues tackled here: abuse, grief, and racism, among others. Rivers Solomon handles these topics with care, which is something I have now come to expect. From the two books of theirs I have now read, they write LGBT+ characters (and characters in general) extremely well. They depict trauma, mental illness, and grief expertly, weaving a story with poetically relatable prose (yet another book full of highlights). I have only given 4 stars as I found it was largely interpersonal dynamics, relationships, and conversations, with a slower pace than I prefer. I did also note many speech marks missing which made it harder to read. As is typical for me, I wanted more overt horror, but I enjoyed the story overall. As you progress, the dread mounts because you know what's going on, you know the trauma and the abuse that's occurred but has been pushed down to cope. Pushed down so deep you can barely reach it. It doesn’t matter that you can see it coming. It will still hit you like a train.

"The realization that validation of the pain will never come from those who inflicted the pain has the power to obliterate. Did it happen? If they’re not apologizing, if they’re not admitting they’ve done it, did they do it? What is real? What is true? Is my life a fantasy? Then let me wake up by dying."

Sometimes people are what haunts the house. Sometimes people are the monsters under the bed.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

‘Model Home’ by Rivers Solomon is a novel we didn’t know we needed. There was an obvious gap in the market, and they have filled that gap with this grappling story that makes you question everything from the beginning. Solomon offers a hauntingly ideology of what contemporary American life could be like for Black people; it comes across as somewhat far-fetched, but at the moment how far-fetched could it be?

The exploration of three siblings and what happened in their past when they lived as a somewhat happy family at number 677. Growing up in Dalton, Texas with two sisters – Eve and Emmanual – Ezri weaves a narrative of someone who struggles with gender identity, racism and deeper problems that relate a lot closely to the ending of the story, allowing the reader to go through the story at the same time as Ezri is – as if real-life events are being written as we are reading the book. 

When their parents are found dead in the house, Ezri, Eve and Emmanuel must face their questionable past of trauma, denial and terror they witnessed and the haunting by the woman with no face. 

Solomons’ words will make you feel consumed in the words, and although it’s a slow-release book, you will get through the pages so fast due to the feelings you endure with the characters. The idea of being suffocated and almost possessed with emotions and information in regards to Ezri and their family. Intergenerational trauma is prominent with themes of racism, white supremacy and throughout there are darker themes of sexual assault and grooming. 

Looking back at the story now I have finished reading it, it becomes so obvious how the story ended and how it all unravelled, but part of you did want the supernatural occurrences to be more involved with the outcome. Solomon challenges the stereotypical haunted house aspect, where it turns out, that the scariest things people can be confronted with are more realistic issues such as the complex trauma that Ezri had to endure as a child. 

The whole storyline is to face the ghosts of your past and deal with the trauma you were dealt with otherwise it will escalate and it will haunt you. Healing in the book is shown as the hardest thing the siblings have to deal with, their existence somewhat relying on them focusing on themselves and coming together as a family rather than pushing away and falling into the darkness. Ezri shows this a lot throughout the book, spiralling into the depths of an embrace of Nightmare Mother. 
I would have given this novel five stars, but the only issue I had with it was that the ending felt somewhat rushed after everything that happened. I feel that Laurie needed the punishment she deserved and the family needed that closure of justice. But I suppose letting a white person go after tormenting a black family to the point of suicide is more realistic in today’s society, unfortunately.

I loved River Solomons ‘An Unkindness of Ghosts’ due to the way it was written, and again they have managed that flow of lyrical literacy in a way that not many other writers can. The narrative is always raw, and truthful and pushes the boundaries of modern fiction to the point it doesn’t feel like fiction anymore. The energy of the narrative and the resilience of the characters balance each other out to give us this powerful novel that will be read for years to come.