Item: The Family Plot
Rating: 3.50
Author: quirkycat

by Cherie Priest

Chuck Dutton built Music City Salvage with patience and expertise, stripping historic properties and reselling their bones. Inventory is running low, so he's thrilled when Augusta Withrow appears in his office offering salvage rights to her entire property. This could be a gold mine, so he assigns his daughter Dahlia to personally oversee the project. The crew finds a handful of surprises right away. Firstly, the place is in unexpectedly good shape. And then there's the cemetery, about thirty fallen and overgrown graves dating to the early 1900s, Augusta insists that the cemetery isjust a fake, a Halloween prank, so the city gives the go-ahead, the bulldozer revs up, and it turns up human remains. Augusta says she doesn't know whose body it is or how many others might be present and refuses to answer any more questions. Then she stops answering the phone. But Dahlia's concerns about the corpse and Augusta's disappearance are overshadowed when she begins to realise that she and her crew are not alone, and they're not welcome at the Withrow estate. They have no idea how much danger they're in, but they're starting to get an idea.
On the crew's third night in the house, a storm shuts down the only road to the property. The power goes out. Cell signals are iffy. There's nowhere to go and no one Dahlia can call for help, even if anyone would believe that she and her crew are being stalked by a murderous phantom. Something at the Withrow mansion is angry and lost, and this is its last chance to raise hell before the house is gone forever. And it seems to be seeking permanent company. The Family Plot is a haunted house story for the ages-atmospheric, scary, and strange, with a modern gothic sensibility to keep it fresh and interesting-from Cherie Priest, a modern master of supernatural fiction.

The Family Plot is the latest paranormal mystery to come from the mind of Cherie Priest (the author who brought us Boneshaker, Maplecroft, and more).

Chuck Dutton runs a family business called the Music City Salvage. They specialize in tearing down historic properties, which are just about as dirty and dull as you might imagine. Naturally, that means Chuck didn't hesitate to take a new tear-down with a high reward.

Only when he and his family get to the property, they realize that they were not told the full story, and those secrets may very well cost them everything.

“This may be a shitty work environment, but OSHA doesn't have any guidelines when it comes to ghosts. We'll have to make up our own as we go.”

The Family Plot is very much a new take on the classic haunted house story, making it perfect for reading this time of year. I love the idea of one family going in with the intent of tearing down a haunted building – without having any clue what they're in for.

That setting combined with clever writing and surprisingly quippy characters resulted in a pretty fun read. I liked Dahlia and her sense of humor. It worked to balance out everything else that was going on.

Honestly, if I say anything more about The Family Plot, I will risk spoiling something, so I'm going to cut this review short. Be sure to read it if you like haunted houses!

Thanks to Tor Books and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

For more reviews check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

The Family Plot

by Cherie Priest

Reviewed by Quirky Cat on Sep 3, 2021

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