Book Review: ‘A Good House for Children’ by Kate Collins

Kate Collins’ 2023 debut novel A Good House for Children is a classic haunted house mystery, which features two parallel storylines.

In 1976 Lydia travels to The Reeve, an imposing house in Dorset, with the recently widowed Sara and her four children. In 2017 Orla agrees to move to The Reeve with her husband and two young children. Both woman soon realise that not everything is as it seems with this old, unfriendly house – but will anyone believe them in time?

A Good House for Children is a quintessential haunted house tale with its daunting old manor house, ghostly apparitions, unexplained noises, a pair of creepy twin girls and an endless sense of foreboding which leads to a descent into madness for the characters.

What Collins does really well is to make The Reeve feel like a character within the novel. In a way it is the house itself who is the main character of the story with Lydia and Orla acting as supporting players in its long history. The Reeve’s oppressive and controlling nature is frequently commented upon as both women feel entrapped by the walls and whims of the dark house.

During the first half of the novel, I was getting worried. Even though The Reeve was a successful creation, the story was good, and I enjoyed following the lives of the two main characters – I felt as though the story was missing a spark to truly set it apart from other books in the same sub-genre. That is until the halfway point reveal that changed the dynamic of the story as we found out that Lydia and Orla’s lives were more entwined beyond simply being residents of the same house. This new element made me excited to continue reading and delve into the lives of these characters.

For this reason I felt the second half of the book was stronger than the first. It built up the tension and mysteries surrounding the house as The Reeve’s power grew and Orla and Lydia’s grip on reality weakened.

Unusually the novel, in essence, has three endings – one for both Orla and Lydia’s timelines and an epilogue. The epilogue ensured the book ended strongly on an ominous note as it flashed forward to a new family taking up residence at The Reeve. However I felt that both Orla and Lydia’s plotlines needed one more chapter each to resolve everything. There were too many unanswered questions left over for it to be a fully satisfying conclusion.

A Good House of Children is a good mix of a haunted house classic and psychological thriller. There were several elements of the story that I enjoyed and other elements that I wish Collins has pushed further. That said, the novel kept me wanting to read on and learn the fates of Lydia and Orla.

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