Grim Root by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
Dark Matter INK (October 2024)
Reviewed by Chandra Claypool (Instagram) (TikTok)
Touted as a “humorous gothic horror novel pitched as The Bachelor meets The Haunting of Hill House,” this novel definitely delivered on the first part and somewhat on the latter. In this novel, a “group of women on a reality TV dating show must compete for the hand of an eligible bachelor by spending a week in a haunted house.” Sign me up! I absolutely love this idea for a plot. Reality shows are a great setting for some devious and illicit things to occur.
I personally am not the biggest fan of The Bachelor but I understand why people are. Trust me, I love some “it’s so bad it’s good” reality shows so no judgment here!
Each woman is vying for the attention and engagement of The Groom (the title of the show itself). The fun part of this read is seeing the background of The Groom and how they move about in their filming of the scenes. Whether it’s scripted, has to be retaped, or the many confessionals of everyone involved, it plays out almost exactly as I imagined it would be behind the scenes. The first half delves into all of this as well as the background of each of the contestants and why they chose to be on the show. Probably my favorite character was Deja, who ran the show and was basically the most heinous person within the pages. She was quite the force to be reckoned with!
The latter part of the book delved more into haunting part of the story, but I felt that there was no real build up or suspense to make the intended mark. I realize it’s a humorous novel, but wanted that creepy feeling to arise with the characters. While the house seemed to be a character of its own, I wanted more of this to be seen as we transversed through the many different passages within. There’s also some touching of how certain characters are tied to the house but we never get the full explanation or effect that was expected. I also found the read to be slow and repetitive. This may be done purposefully as the daily life of the contestants really are repetitive but splattered with various dates and conflicts. As we get to know the characters, certain storylines veered into different territories and I felt it didn’t really lend well to the horror of it all.
Overall, this was a fun read for those who want more backstory on how reality shows work and the very interesting characters that are involved, including the cameramen. Go into this read expecting humor and maybe a little bit of satire on reality shows and haunted houses. Can you guess who will win? This may surprise you in more ways than one.
