Review – The House at Watch Hill (The Watch Hill Trilogy, Book 1) by Karen Marie Moning (2/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Length: 380 pages
Publisher: William Morrow
Release Date: October 1, 2024
ASIN: B0CRQGVNS8
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in The Watch Hill trilogy
Source: eGalley from NetGalley for Review
Rating: 2/5 stars
“Zo Grey is reeling from the sudden death of her mother when she receives a surprising call from an attorney in Divinity, Louisiana, with the news she has been left an inheritance by a distant relative, the terms of which he will only discuss in person. Destitute and alone, with nothing left to lose, Zo heads to Divinity and discovers she is the sole beneficiary of a huge fortune and a monstrosity of a house that sits ominously at the peak of Watch Hill—but she must live in it, alone, for three years before the house, or the money, is hers.
Met with this irresistible opportunity to finally build a future for herself, Zo puts aside her misgivings about the foreboding Gothic mansion and the strange circumstances, and moves in, where she is quickly met by a red-eyed Stygian owl and an impossibly sexy Scottish groundskeeper.
Her new home is full of countless secrets and mystifying riddles, with doors that go nowhere, others that are impossible to open, and a turret into which there is no visible means of ingress. And the townspeople are odd…
What Zo doesn’t yet know is that her own roots lie in this very house and that in order to discover her true identity and awaken her dormant powers, she will have to face off against sinister forces she doesn’t quite comprehend—or risk being consumed by them.”
Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Watch Hill Trilogy. I got a copy of this on ebook from NetGalley for review.
Thoughts: I was going to give this 3 stars, but then I started writing the review and realized that I didn’t really like anything about this book. This is a very Karen Marie Moning type of book; it’s a very sexually charged paranormal mystery that really rides on sexual tension and predictable mystery to move the story forward. I really enjoyed the first five or so books of Moning’s Fever series (I gave up on that series when Dani was introduced) but haven’t read any other books by her since then. This book reminded me why I stopped reading books by Moning.
This follows the story of Zo, who is in her mid 20’s, struggling to pay for her mother’s cancer treatments, and finds herself suddenly orphaned. Shortly after this, she gets a call that she’s inherited a giant spooky manor. This whole story felt like an intro to the series, basically getting Zo to this community and finding out why she was brought there.
The storyline here is pretty typical and predictable. Strangely it reminds me a bit of K.F. Breene’s Leveling Up series but wasn’t nearly as fun, intriguing, or well thought out. I kept expecting something more from the house, and Zo’s powers are never well explained. I was also disappointed when the story went exactly how I thought it was going to go.
The way Zo goes from responsible, struggling daughter to sudden predatory sex fiend was just weird. The story does spend quite a bit of time trying to explain this but it just seemed odd and disrespectful both to Zo and to the men she targets. All of the characters in this book are using each other and had ulterior motives. This left a bad taste in my mouth and had a very late 90’s early 2000’s UF feel to the story.
Strangely, despite all the build-up to the sex scenes, they end up being mostly glossed over. Very much like “we had fun all night and then I couldn’t walk the next morning”. If youare going to spend that much time building up to a sex scene I at least expect to read a sex scene at some point.
This also ends on a huge cliffhanger, which I hate. I always feel like that is the author admitting their story and writing aren’t enough to keep the reader coming back, so they have to bait the reader. In this case, the clilff-hanger is a man that appears that we spent a couple of pages with early on in the book…why do I care? Despite the supposed huge cliffhanger here, I have zero interest in continuing this series.
My Summary (2/5): Overall I finished this but kept hoping it would get better. I didn’t enjoy the characters here, there was very little actual world-building, the magic isn’t explained, and the mystery isn’t all that mysterious. I have no interest in continuing this series and realized that this is similar to Moning’s writing in her “Dani” days. I won’t be picking up more Moning books any time soon.
