Diversity in Horror Fiction

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Genre: Ghosts and Haunting, Gothic

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Black author, Black, neurodiverse main character with generalized anxiety disorder. Major bisexual character with alcohol use disorder

Takes Place in: Mississippi

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Alcohol Abuse, Child Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm,  Suicide, Torture, Violence

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Shantell expects to hate the rural South based on her grandmother’s stories of lynchings and Jim Crow that she moved North to escape. As someone who’s lived in Massachusetts their whole life, and whose grandmother left the South during the great migration for Chicago, I could definitely relate. But her best friend, a white man named Avery, has just inherited a house in Mississippi and invites her to come live with him there. The offer of a life with no rent and a safe place to ride out her anxiety-induced agoraphobia seems too good to be true. Shantell’s life has been full of death, her mother’s suicide, her father death abroad while in the military, and her brother getting shot by police, but none of those deaths came with anything but loss. Certainly not a free house. But Avery’s family is wealthy, and life has always been good to him. His brother Tobias, not so much. Shantell is upset when she learns Avery has hired Tobias to make repairs on the house since she remembers him as the asshole who punches walls and doesn’t talk much. But as they work together repairing the house Shantell starts to warm up to Tobias.

Days pass pleasantly and Shantell feels more comfortable than she has in a long time. But weird things start happening. Shantell sees figures at night and something traps Tobias in the closet despite there being no lock on the door. When the Avery and Shantell go to a nearby gas station to get snacks and coffee the Black owner tells Shantell “Nothing bad happens in the big house” when she asks about the house’s history. She knows he’s trying to tell her something important, but isn’t sure what. Later, while on a ghost tour, their guide Hakeem tells them about the tragedies that happened around town: a mill explosion, a fire that destroyed the homes of thousands, and a mysterious illness that killed a dozen infants over a few days. But none of these tragedies touched the house in which Avery and Shantell now reside. The town seems like it’s cursed, but Hakeem points out the properties around the house were always poorer and Blacker than Avery’s family home. The mill owners most likely chose to ignore basic safety measures to protect their largely non-white and immigrant workers, the victims of the fire couldn’t afford to build with brick, and the working mothers may have relied on a tainted formula supply to feed their babies while the wealthy were free to breastfeed. “There’s a distance from which poverty appears indistinguishable from a curse” Hakeem says.

Avery, Shantell, and Tobias don’t realize it, but the house had a dark start. It was built in postbellum Mississippi, by a white woman named Adele whose family and husband enslaved Black people. She tells herself she’s not like them since she didn’t own the slaves personally, only beat a slave once as a child, and while she may not have tried to intervene when her husband raped the women he enslaved, she didn’t actively encourage it like some of her friend did. She’s a “good person” who even once had lunch with abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe. Fortunately, the Union army doesn’t listen to her protests and burns down her plantation. Adele decides to build the “safe” place she deserves, the house in which Shantell and Avery now live. She uses very spell and superstition she knows to make the house a safe place, putting brick dust, clay, and ashes from her father’s land. She ignores the fact that the brick dust came from her father’s sweat box, the clay from the ground where he’d staked runaways, and the ashes were from the twenty enslaved people burned alive as punishment for the 1712 slave rebellion, a grim “souvenir” her grandfather had collected,

Johnson does an excellent job delving into the racist violence experienced by Black Americans throughout history, from slavery to gang violence, without ever getting too graphic. It reminded me of how Nia DaCosta’s Candyman (2021) chose to portray the violent deaths of each previous Candyman with paper cutouts rather than live actors. The emotional impact of the racial violence is still there, but it feels less traumatic. And for the Black readers, some of what’s discussed in the book is traumatic. I was especially affected by a scene *trigger warning* where Shantell finds a Black man’s hand in a jar labeled “monkey’s hand.” There’s also reference made to the real-life torture and lynching of Sam Hose. *end trigger warning* Mercifully, the book does not go into great detail because it is truly disturbing, and I honestly don’t know if I could’ve handled it, even in a horror book. Fictional violence is one thing, but real-life violence is another entirely. And as someone who is half Black, racist violence hits especially close to home. Some of the scenes felt like a gut punch that left me reeling. A non-Black author never would’ve been able to tell this story in a way that  wasn’t deeply exploitative. But Johnson expertly tackles the horrors of racism, both subtle and extreme, like slavery, police violence, poverty, Black mental health, and even the complexities of being friends with a white person.

Shantell and Avery’s friendship really highlights how differently low-income Black women and wealthy white men experience the world. Shantell lives with constant fear and anxiety because she’s hyper aware of what she’s lost and generally has a pessimistic outlook. Avery, on the other hand, assumes everything will always work out no matter what. He’s every dumb white guy in a horror movie, pushing aside everyone else concerns that they’re clearly in a dangerous situation and insisting everything is fine with annoying optimism and naiveite. Avery isn’t a bad guy; it’s clear he cares deeply about Shantell, treating her with deference and trying to protect her from the world. But he’s still rich and white, and even though he does at least try to acknowledge his privilege, it doesn’t always work.

This is another thing I think Johnson handled really well. Often, it’s really hard for white people to confront their own internalized racism because they’re not trying to be racist. They also have this idea in their head that only bad people are racist, and because they’re not a bad person they can’t possibly be racist. It’s why in media you get white saviors vs irredeemable racists who border on caricature like Simon Legree. But this type of portrayal is problematic because it reinforces the idea that only the “bad” people are racist when in truth anyone can be racist. We live in a racist society, if you’re white you’re going to say or do something harmful to BIPOCs at some point in your life. And it will probably be unintentional, though no less hurtful. But portraying racism as something only the “bad” people do means you get people who become defensive when someone tries to point out their racism, or they try to minimize the harm they did (pro-tip: when you find yourself in this situation offer a sincere apology to the person you hurt instead of making it about you, and thank them for letting you know).

I think that mindset makes it especially hard for people to unlearn their internalized racism. This is why I liked Avery so much as a character, he lives in a gray area that feels much more realistic of many white liberals. Shantell would not have befriended him if he weren’t a good guy, but as any Black person with white friends will tell you, sometimes your friends do shit that just makes you cringe. And Avery is no exception. Shantell discovers Avery inherited the house a while ago, and only decided to move there to help Shantell. She feels hurt that Avery thinks she’s dependent on him and would be lost without his help. She doesn’t even let Avery help her with rent so giving her a house behind her back and lying about it is a betrayal and  like he’s not listening to her. Avery worries a lot more about what people say about Shantell than she does. She doesn’t really care (and honestly if she did, as a neurodiverse Black woman she’d be exhausted ). But Avery also treats her like she’s fragile and needs him to take care of her, like she’s deficient. After Shantell suffered a breakdown, he started to treat her like she was helpless, and she nearly ended their friendship over it.  

While it’s never explicitly stated, it’s heavily implied that Shantell is autistic (we know she’s neurodiverse) and I love that. Do you know how hard it is to find neurodiverse Black characters in fiction?  Especially women? On average Black children are diagnosed with autism later than white children, so they end up missing out on early support services. Part of the delay in diagnosis is because traditional autism research has mainly focused on white, middle class families. Another part of it is that Black students are assumed to be ignorant and lazy by a racist education system, minimizing or erasing altogether their access to disability services. Participants in this study also described a lack of resources and external support due to financial constraints, especially since autism evaluations are expensive as hell! Black children are also more likely to be labeled defiant for regular behaviors, so autistic behavior could be misconstrued as child being intentionally disruptive or disobedient. Research also indicates that autism is more likely to be underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed in girls, as it can present differently than in boys. So, if you’re an autistic Black girl or woman like Shantell? Forget it. She probably was never able to get an official diagnosis, which is why it’s not mentioned in the book. But Avery and Shantell are both aware she isn’t neurotypical. And while Avery tries to be supportive, he often crosses into infantilization territory, which Shantell finds degrading.

The Unhaunting was such a great read. I was intrigued by idea of an “unhaunted” house, where nothing bad happens there EVER, not even deaths. It seems like a dream come true at first, but the longer you think about it the more sinister it becomes. Why has the community suffered so much tragedy, yet the house remains a safe haven? It even helps Shantell’s anxiety and Tobias stops chain smoking. Never has a house without ghosts felt so scary! The story is written from the house’s point of view, while it observes its current occupants and remembers its past, and through it we learn that it has less than pure motivations, even when it insists it wants to protect the people who live there. But this is a horror story, so you know it’s too good to be true. I also think Johnson did an excellent job depicting Shantell’s internal struggle. She’s aware something is wrong with the house, but she also knows it lifts the burden of her trauma. Would it be wrong to stay there if she can finally be happy after a life of tragedy? You have to admire the strength of Shantell’s character, as most people wouldn’t think twice about accepting the offer of a free house when they’re struggling to pay rent. She’s at least conflicted about it. Ultimately the choices made by both Shantell and Avery highlight how different their lives are due to race and wealth.

This is a book about privilege and power, and how those who have treat those who don’t. It addresses violence against Black people, both historical (slavery, lynching) and modern (police murders, gang violence, suicide). There’s even a list of further reading at the end so you can learn more about historical and modern racism, like They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, Watermelons, Nooses, and Straight Razors: Stories from the Jim Crow Museum by David Pilgrim, Afropessimism by Frank B Wilderson III, and The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture by Vincent Woodard. The nerd in me loves reading lists! The book also explores the weight of grief and trauma on a person, and how it affects them. We learn that Avery and Tobias both have their own trauma they’re trying to process, and we see how differently Shantell and the two brothers process what’s happened to them (the further reading sections recommends Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence by Judith Butler if you want to read more on the subject of how grief affects people). But ultimately the main theme is how those with privilege benefit from the suffering of those without it, whether intentional or not.

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Genre: Ghosts and Haunting, Gothic

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Black author, Black, neurodiverse main character with generalized anxiety disorder. Major bisexual character with alcohol use disorder

Takes Place in: Mississippi

Content Warnings (Highlight to view): Ableism, Alcohol Abuse, Child Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm,  Suicide, Torture, Violence

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Shantell expects to hate the rural South based on her grandmother’s stories of lynchings and Jim Crow that she moved North to escape. As someone who’s lived in Massachusetts their whole life, and whose grandmother left the South during the great migration for Chicago, I could definitely relate. But her best friend, a white man named Avery, has just inherited a house in Mississippi and invites her to come live with him there. The offer of a life with no rent and a safe place to ride out her anxiety-induced agoraphobia seems too good to be true. Shantell’s life has been full of death, her mother’s suicide, her father death abroad while in the military, and her brother getting shot by police, but none of those deaths came with anything but loss. Certainly not a free house. But Avery’s family is wealthy, and life has always been good to him. His brother Tobias, not so much. Shantell is upset when she learns Avery has hired Tobias to make repairs on the house since she remembers him as the asshole who punches walls and doesn’t talk much. But as they work together repairing the house Shantell starts to warm up to Tobias.

Days pass pleasantly and Shantell feels more comfortable than she has in a long time. But weird things start happening. Shantell sees figures at night and something traps Tobias in the closet despite there being no lock on the door. When the Avery and Shantell go to a nearby gas station to get snacks and coffee the Black owner tells Shantell “Nothing bad happens in the big house” when she asks about the house’s history. She knows he’s trying to tell her something important, but isn’t sure what. Later, while on a ghost tour, their guide Hakeem tells them about the tragedies that happened around town: a mill explosion, a fire that destroyed the homes of thousands, and a mysterious illness that killed a dozen infants over a few days. But none of these tragedies touched the house in which Avery and Shantell now reside. The town seems like it’s cursed, but Hakeem points out the properties around the house were always poorer and Blacker than Avery’s family home. The mill owners most likely chose to ignore basic safety measures to protect their largely non-white and immigrant workers, the victims of the fire couldn’t afford to build with brick, and the working mothers may have relied on a tainted formula supply to feed their babies while the wealthy were free to breastfeed. “There’s a distance from which poverty appears indistinguishable from a curse” Hakeem says.

Avery, Shantell, and Tobias don’t realize it, but the house had a dark start. It was built in postbellum Mississippi, by a white woman named Adele whose family and husband enslaved Black people. She tells herself she’s not like them since she didn’t own the slaves personally, only beat a slave once as a child, and while she may not have tried to intervene when her husband raped the women he enslaved, she didn’t actively encourage it like some of her friend did. She’s a “good person” who even once had lunch with abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe. Fortunately, the Union army doesn’t listen to her protests and burns down her plantation. Adele decides to build the “safe” place she deserves, the house in which Shantell and Avery now live. She uses very spell and superstition she knows to make the house a safe place, putting brick dust, clay, and ashes from her father’s land. She ignores the fact that the brick dust came from her father’s sweat box, the clay from the ground where he’d staked runaways, and the ashes were from the twenty enslaved people burned alive as punishment for the 1712 slave rebellion, a grim “souvenir” her grandfather had collected,

Johnson does an excellent job delving into the racist violence experienced by Black Americans throughout history, from slavery to gang violence, without ever getting too graphic. It reminded me of how Nia DaCosta’s Candyman (2021) chose to portray the violent deaths of each previous Candyman with paper cutouts rather than live actors. The emotional impact of the racial violence is still there, but it feels less traumatic. And for the Black readers, some of what’s discussed in the book is traumatic. I was especially affected by a scene *trigger warning* where Shantell finds a Black man’s hand in a jar labeled “monkey’s hand.” There’s also reference made to the real-life torture and lynching of Sam Hose. *end trigger warning* Mercifully, the book does not go into great detail because it is truly disturbing, and I honestly don’t know if I could’ve handled it, even in a horror book. Fictional violence is one thing, but real-life violence is another entirely. And as someone who is half Black, racist violence hits especially close to home. Some of the scenes felt like a gut punch that left me reeling. A non-Black author never would’ve been able to tell this story in a way that  wasn’t deeply exploitative. But Johnson expertly tackles the horrors of racism, both subtle and extreme, like slavery, police violence, poverty, Black mental health, and even the complexities of being friends with a white person.

Shantell and Avery’s friendship really highlights how differently low-income Black women and wealthy white men experience the world. Shantell lives with constant fear and anxiety because she’s hyper aware of what she’s lost and generally has a pessimistic outlook. Avery, on the other hand, assumes everything will always work out no matter what. He’s every dumb white guy in a horror movie, pushing aside everyone else concerns that they’re clearly in a dangerous situation and insisting everything is fine with annoying optimism and naiveite. Avery isn’t a bad guy; it’s clear he cares deeply about Shantell, treating her with deference and trying to protect her from the world. But he’s still rich and white, and even though he does at least try to acknowledge his privilege, it doesn’t always work.

This is another thing I think Johnson handled really well. Often, it’s really hard for white people to confront their own internalized racism because they’re not trying to be racist. They also have this idea in their head that only bad people are racist, and because they’re not a bad person they can’t possibly be racist. It’s why in media you get white saviors vs irredeemable racists who border on caricature like Simon Legree. But this type of portrayal is problematic because it reinforces the idea that only the “bad” people are racist when in truth anyone can be racist. We live in a racist society, if you’re white you’re going to say or do something harmful to BIPOCs at some point in your life. And it will probably be unintentional, though no less hurtful. But portraying racism as something only the “bad” people do means you get people who become defensive when someone tries to point out their racism, or they try to minimize the harm they did (pro-tip: when you find yourself in this situation offer a sincere apology to the person you hurt instead of making it about you, and thank them for letting you know).

I think that mindset makes it especially hard for people to unlearn their internalized racism. This is why I liked Avery so much as a character, he lives in a gray area that feels much more realistic of many white liberals. Shantell would not have befriended him if he weren’t a good guy, but as any Black person with white friends will tell you, sometimes your friends do shit that just makes you cringe. And Avery is no exception. Shantell discovers Avery inherited the house a while ago, and only decided to move there to help Shantell. She feels hurt that Avery thinks she’s dependent on him and would be lost without his help. She doesn’t even let Avery help her with rent so giving her a house behind her back and lying about it is a betrayal and  like he’s not listening to her. Avery worries a lot more about what people say about Shantell than she does. She doesn’t really care (and honestly if she did, as a neurodiverse Black woman she’d be exhausted ). But Avery also treats her like she’s fragile and needs him to take care of her, like she’s deficient. After Shantell suffered a breakdown, he started to treat her like she was helpless, and she nearly ended their friendship over it.  

While it’s never explicitly stated, it’s heavily implied that Shantell is autistic (we know she’s neurodiverse) and I love that. Do you know how hard it is to find neurodiverse Black characters in fiction?  Especially women? On average Black children are diagnosed with autism later than white children, so they end up missing out on early support services. Part of the delay in diagnosis is because traditional autism research has mainly focused on white, middle class families. Another part of it is that Black students are assumed to be ignorant and lazy by a racist education system, minimizing or erasing altogether their access to disability services. Participants in this study also described a lack of resources and external support due to financial constraints, especially since autism evaluations are expensive as hell! Black children are also more likely to be labeled defiant for regular behaviors, so autistic behavior could be misconstrued as child being intentionally disruptive or disobedient. Research also indicates that autism is more likely to be underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed in girls, as it can present differently than in boys. So, if you’re an autistic Black girl or woman like Shantell? Forget it. She probably was never able to get an official diagnosis, which is why it’s not mentioned in the book. But Avery and Shantell are both aware she isn’t neurotypical. And while Avery tries to be supportive, he often crosses into infantilization territory, which Shantell finds degrading.

The Unhaunting was such a great read. I was intrigued by idea of an “unhaunted” house, where nothing bad happens there EVER, not even deaths. It seems like a dream come true at first, but the longer you think about it the more sinister it becomes. Why has the community suffered so much tragedy, yet the house remains a safe haven? It even helps Shantell’s anxiety and Tobias stops chain smoking. Never has a house without ghosts felt so scary! The story is written from the house’s point of view, while it observes its current occupants and remembers its past, and through it we learn that it has less than pure motivations, even when it insists it wants to protect the people who live there. But this is a horror story, so you know it’s too good to be true. I also think Johnson did an excellent job depicting Shantell’s internal struggle. She’s aware something is wrong with the house, but she also knows it lifts the burden of her trauma. Would it be wrong to stay there if she can finally be happy after a life of tragedy? You have to admire the strength of Shantell’s character, as most people wouldn’t think twice about accepting the offer of a free house when they’re struggling to pay rent. She’s at least conflicted about it. Ultimately the choices made by both Shantell and Avery highlight how different their lives are due to race and wealth.

This is a book about privilege and power, and how those who have treat those who don’t. It addresses violence against Black people, both historical (slavery, lynching) and modern (police murders, gang violence, suicide). There’s even a list of further reading at the end so you can learn more about historical and modern racism, like They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, Watermelons, Nooses, and Straight Razors: Stories from the Jim Crow Museum by David Pilgrim, Afropessimism by Frank B Wilderson III, and The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture by Vincent Woodard. The nerd in me loves reading lists! The book also explores the weight of grief and trauma on a person, and how it affects them. We learn that Avery and Tobias both have their own trauma they’re trying to process, and we see how differently Shantell and the two brothers process what’s happened to them (the further reading sections recommends Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence by Judith Butler if you want to read more on the subject of how grief affects people). But ultimately the main theme is how those with privilege benefit from the suffering of those without it, whether intentional or not.