Review: "The House Saphir" by Marissa Meyer

The House Saphir by Marissa Meyer
Published November 2025 via Feiwel & Friends
★★★★

If a young lady did not wish to be murdered, it was advisable that she not spend her evenings meeting with strangers on dark street corners. (loc. 82*)

Mallory has settled into a reasonably satisfying gig, giving haunted mansion tours—something she's uniquely qualified to do, as the card up her sleeve is that she can see ghosts. But a good thing can't last forever, and just when it looks like her luck has run out, she's presented with a new opportunity: Rid a related mansion of its violent and manipulative ghost, and she'll earn enough money to set her and her sister up for a long time. Nobody said it would be easy...

I read this largely for the rambling-old-house aspect, but the ghosts turned out to be something of a bonus. (There was a moment, in reading, where I'd forgotten that there was going to be a supernatural element, and then bam! Ghosts. Quite satisfying.) I don't always think Mallory's choices are the wisest—she goes into her new job determined less to do the job well than to scam her new employer, but to my eye she has a great deal more scope for honesty than she permits herself—instead of saying "Yes, I can totally know how to employ skills I don't have to fix this problem," she could theoretically say "I can't do the thing you want, but I can get information that nobody else can." Then again, that would interfere with certain twists deep into the book...

At any rate, I had a grand old time reading this. Mallory is a fun character—determined, sly, sometimes a bit rash but with reason to take the risks she does. The setting is even more fun, what with the rambling house and the ghosts who...well, sometimes they're agreeable. Sometimes not so much. It looks like there's potential for a related book or two, and I wouldn't mind seeing what happens there.

As an aside: I read the line Mallory had been eleven when their mother left this world (loc. 748; not a spoiler) the same day I posted a review for Slip...which is by a woman whose first name is Mallary and who, among other things, lost her mother at the age of eleven. I'm not actually all that superstitious, but it felt like...well, an appropriately spooky coincidence. Not bad vibes to go into a book with!

*Quotes are from an ARC and might not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.