Review: Model Home by Rivers Solomon

Title: Model Home

Author: Rivers Solomon

Publisher: MCD Books

Length: 286 Pages

Category: Psychological Horror

Rating: 4 Stars

At a Glance: Model Home is one of those books that people seem to either love or loathe, with very little middle ground. It’s that kind of story, one in which readers become frustrated with the telling and/or the characters, or become absorbed by and involved with them and their myriad trials and tragedies. It is very much a different kind of horror story than I expected.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.

As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents’ death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural” death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?

Review: Ezri Maxwell didn’t simply leave Texas when they were old enough to run; they fled the country altogether to attend Oxford University, planning never to return. Neither distance nor proximity change how the past affects them, though, and being a single parent to a teenager on top of it presents challenges they aren’t equipped to handle. At least, not well. Ezri as a character study is rife with emotional and psychological conflict, and they are a contradiction at times—such as converting to Judaism though “functionally an atheist.” Ezri is a challenging character, but this story could not have been told from anyone else’s perspective.

Model Home is one of those books that people seem to either love or loathe, with very little middle ground. It’s that kind of story, one in which readers become frustrated with the telling and/or the characters, or become absorbed by and involved with them and their myriad trials and tragedies. It is very much a different kind of horror story than I expected. It isn’t steeped in the paranormal. Rather, it presents a veneer of humanity clothed in psychological and physical abuse. Its monsters and villains are masked in civility and respectability, and they are repulsive to the core.

Rivers Solomon tells the story of a Black family living in a white, affluent Dallas neighborhood and all the prejudice that comes with that. Money means nothing in the face of blatant racism in suburbia, incapable of fostering morality or moderating the behavior of allegedly civilized society. The estranged Maxwell siblings’ lives and relationships are informed and driven by childhood trauma which they’re forced to confront upon their parents’ deaths and their return home, to the house and the memories that continue to haunt and afflict. Though while this is a family’s story, it is Ezri and their daughter, Elijah, who are its focus. It’s a story of . . . not healing so much as attempting to manage a functional existence.

Be warned this novel confronts many things horrific, including predatory adults and pedophilia. The primary thing that left me disappointed is that the victims didn’t take their chance for revenge when they had it. In light of that, they are much less bloodthirsty and better people than I am.