Foreclosure Gothic

by Harris Lahti

A multi-generational and deeply autobiographical gothic tale of Hollywood dreams and upstate New York reality that feels like Andre Dubus III meets Chantal V. Johnson.

Foreclosure Gothic reimagines the American Gothic against the backdrop of today's Hudson Valley. The story tells of ex-Hollywood actor Vic Greener as he falls in love with the elusive Heather Roswell and the couple, following in the footsteps of Vic's father, resolves to make a life restoring one foreclosed home after another. Then comes the uncanny, destabilizing arrival of new tenants in their duplex, and the Greener's shocking discovery upon their departure.

With evocative and unsettling black and white photos throughout, this debut novel is at once a skewed portrait of three generations of Greener men, an intimate look at both childhood and parenthood and an examination of the friction between chasing one's dream and working to make money.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Gothic, Adult, Novels, Literary Fiction, Contemporary

240 pages, Hardcover

First published June 10, 2025

Reviews

[Jillian B · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel-in-short-stories recounts the lives of a family that makes their living by flipping foreclosed homes. There’s a distinctly creepy vibe permeating all the stories but they never tip into the realm of the full-on supernatural. Instead, we get small disturbing details like the strangely misshapen vegetables that grow in the yard of the family’s home, or the tenants who just feel a little off. This gives the effect of making the ordinary feel horrific, and I was uneasy in a good way as I read it. There are photos throughout the book that add to this effect. It feels like we’re spying on a family’s private moments.

I also liked that we follow this family for basically an entire lifetime, from the parents meeting for the first time all the way through to one of their deaths as a senior citizen. I felt like I was getting to know these characters in every stage of their lives and watching them grow and change in a very real way.

This book is an underrated gem and I can’t recommend it enough!

[Allan · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars
The average millennial home renovation TikTok series is considerably scarier than this.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strange little A24 movie of a book.

If you, like me, are a weirdo who enjoys ominous, unsettling horror-adjacent stories, thick with humidity and Picnic At Hanging Rock-style questioning reality, you’ll probably like this, too.

Vic Greener meets Heather as he prepares for a guest role on Days of Our Lives as a sociopathic doctor. Their chemistry is immediate. They fall in love, Heather quickly becomes pregnant, and they move back to the Hudson Valley to be closer to family. As a source of income, Vic finds himself drawn to getting into the house-flipping boom of the late ‘90s and 2000s. What is intended to be a temporary source of income becomes a lifetime career, and a lifetime career begets opportunities to view sinister and strange people as Vic explores foreclosure after foreclosure.

This is a really aptly-titled book: gothic in the sense that on the surface, it is just a biography of a man’s life. The underlying unsettling possibilities and psychologically upsetting moments within are what you choose to make of them. There’s no overt horror here, no jump scares or slashers. Instead, there’s the creeping dread of knowing that something not quite right might be lurking around any corner, influencing your life in ways you might not see coming.

Foreclosure Gothic won’t be for everyone, but its wit and unique subject matter made it a really interesting, satisfyingly spooky early summer read for me. Lahti’s prose is hypnotic, and weaves a viscerally palpable atmosphere where in moments, I swore I could feel the humid sheen of a Hudson Valley summer lingering on my skin.

Thank you so much to Harris Lahti and Astra House for the e-arc.

[Barbara Behring · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really disliked this book. I love Gothic novels but to me this was just a rambling mess.

[Alana · Rating 4 out of 5]

picture books are my passion. nothing gets me going like Rainbow Fish or Good Night Moon

[Linnea Swalwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t even know what this book was about? I kept waiting for something to happen and it never did. I guess that was the point? I’ll give it two stars because the writing wasn’t bad. But this got me two Goodread’s challenge bookmarks, huzzah!

[Luuqq · Rating 1 out of 5]

this is such a strange and derailed narrative. I didn’t like it. There’s sections where elements of horror are introduced within the forclosed homes that the Greener patriarch is working on... with a certain build up, I was interested in the suspense that was created, but then it’s snatched away with no explanation. it drove me nuts and made reading this really annoying. This is if blue balls was a book! Plus the main storyline had me snoozing a bit… it let me down! 1.5.

[poesielos · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked the beginning. The pictures were eerie, Vic clearly got stuck in a job and place he didn't want to be, the house and garden were scary... but nothing ever came from it. Instead it fizzled out into a series of stories I couldn't care less about. Considering we follow the Greeners for about forty years, I don't care for any of them. At all.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think when people see "gothic" they think horror. But this definitely fit the bill for gothic, a sense of decay, a sense of dread, a sense of oppression. I could make comparisons of what this book reminded me of, but at the same time, it defies those and becomes something all its own.

[Piper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was promised that this book would give me nightmares, but overall I found it to be an inoffensive series of vignettes. If you’re a fan of explicit closure, this is not the book for you.

[sarah]

Thank you NetGalley for early access.

Full of peculiar pictures of an unquiet domesticity, Foreclosure Gothic is an ambitious impressionistic debut novel. Ambition, however, as it leaches off of "protagonist" Vic Greener, is equally the downfall of this sporadic tale of a single family across 30-odd years. Each chapter jumps forward in time as if all too eager to get started on the next project, thus leaving the previous work neglected. Perhaps, in time, the novel beyond the novel can show through the weeds.

[Piper · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing in this was genuinely really beautiful and actually my favorite part- I have no idea why this is labeled has horror/thriller and the whole thing just kind of felt like waiting for a sneeze that you keep losing.

[Miles Kenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really wonderful stuff. At no point I could really tell where it was going, and that feeling dragged a bit in the middle third, but I found myself consistently pleasantly surprised by where the book found itself. What it has to say about the economics of creativity is fairly straightforward yet profound, and maybe that’s because it’s correct.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

i haven't read a lot in the gothic genre, but i enjoyed this one! the pace was Intense, but i wish that some of the more classically 'horror' scenes went a little bit further than they did, but i think people who don't typically read horror would like this for that reason exactly. vic was absolutely insufferable (to the point where he felt like a real-life Man) and i loved the inclusion of different pictures. thanks astra & netgalley!

[Nikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't realize that this book takes place over the course of 40ish years and I wasn't expecting the random time jumps. The first half of this book was pretty engaging and even eerie at times. I was expecting more of a haunted house vibe throughout but instead we got a chapter about hunting sea turtles in the Caribbean.
It was fine.

[Alexis Tompkins-Charette · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was interesting, however it also felt like repetition. I understand the metaphor's the author is trying to make within the book, it just fell flat for me.

[Sheila · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars--it was OK. A better title might be Foreclosure Surrealism. Short vignettes and a quick read, but never really solidifying into anything.

[Lorraine Schönrock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve actually needed to change my review from 4 to 5 stars. In the past days I have been often thinking about this book. So the haunting it does to me deserves a 5 star.
The writing was superb. It gave you a creepy feeling and I honestly very much liked (spoiler!) that there is not that big grand finale at every end of the story. I liked this slow burn creepyness. It was something entirely different. In an age where everything needs to be fast paced and have this big plot reveals and pay-offs this was a much needed breath of fresh air!

[Delaney Sweet · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 but rounding up for the end. Gothic housing crisis is literally my academic field and I guess I was looking for it to be scarier but the end sort of made up for that like the moral and literal debt culture of it all. I get that it might not be to everyone’s taste but I had fun and was kept in suspense!

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the disjointed, strange vignettes of chapters really worked for this. Unsettling, funny, and also affecting. Also on a sentence level, Lahti is a beautiful stylist - I kept finding myself rereading paragraphs and not wanting to move on

[is there blood? · Rating 1 out of 5]

no blood until the end. nothing taboo. nothing truly "gothic" about this book, other than the house the family lives in thats rarely mentioned. its a book about an aspiring actor-turned-landlord wasting his life away renovating dilapidated houses.

[EuGrace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Foreclosure Gothic to fulfill a Goodreads challenge, and I hope to GOD I never do a Goodreads challenge again. I thought, "I mean, a little detour in my reading plans is fine. This book looks cool, the cover is very promising. Maybe it revamps American Gothic tropes and uses analog-horror aesthetics!"

FG did not do that. The summary of the book is pretty misleading too. Basically, we meet the main character Vic Greener just as he gets this acting gig to play a sociopathic doctor in a low-brow TV show, but while practicing for the role he runs into this sexy manic pixie dreamgirl type woman Heather, who he proceeds to have a lot of unhinged sex with in his shitty apartment before she disappears for a bit because she's a wandering soul I guess but comes back pregnant, so Vic quits Hollywood and settles down in the Hudson Valley with his new wife. To make money, Vic follows in his father's footsteps and gets into the house-flipping boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which ends up making him more of an asshole (becoming a landlord does that to you) but, hey, at least he makes a ton of money and is genuinely passionate about his projects. All of this happens within the first three chapters of the book, and the rest of the story follows Vic becoming a father, pursuing foreclosure after foreclosure with his wife Heather, and then eventually handing over the family business to his son Junior, who, after being a very creepy articulate kid, we see grow up into this less-than-mid guy who hunts sea turtles in the Caribbean and tries to get into writing (he owns a lot of notebooks), before moving across the country with his own wife and child also doing the foreclosure business. The novel is picaresque and does a lot of time jumps in between chapters, with nothing connecting the parts together other than that we're following the Greeners from Vic and Heather's first meeting all the way to Vic's fatal heart attack + its aftermath -- additionally, they all have some sort of underlying creepy factor.

I'd say the cover of the book, which gives off found footage A24 vibes, isn't very accurate to what you actually get with the story. The title, however, is pretty on-the-nose if you see the term "Gothic" as it was originally defined: The eeriness in FG relies a lot on atmosphere, showing -- not telling, blurring of reality, and experimental imagery. It's Gothic in the sense that, on the surface, the book is essentially just a biography of a man’s life (not exactly a sweeping multigenerational epic exploring the themes of parenthood and chasing one's dream like Goodreads promised me, but whatever). I saw someone compare FG with Joan Lindsey's Picnic At Hanging Rock, which I think is a perfect compliment. The unsettling possibilities and psychologically upsetting moments that occur -- especially in the first part of the book when it's just Vic and Heather and then a baby Junior -- are deliciously ambiguous, though I must admit it's a bit disappointing how Lahti seems to set up a really good concept but then just abandons them just before any real clarity comes to fruition. Then we don't really get room to breathe because we're immediately thrust into another timeskip that I thought would culminate in a big reveal at the end like Lahti was deliberately keeping from us that the Greeners murdered people in between the chapters and we just didn't see it -- but no, no it never amounted to anything like that, sadly. My expectations were for naught, but at least they lent the book a sense of creeping dread that, yes, never amounted to anything, but hey, there were some gems in the rough. I really loved the added black and white pictures, it reminded me of an Uketsu novel, although I feel like the pictures weren't really chosen with as much care as a real, consistent narrative would have required. There are some photographs that definitely have a good effect on the story, but most of them are really random and provide nothing to the reading experience -- aside from the fact that, thank God, there's a picture on this page so I can basically skip it and keep moving on with the book.

There’s no overt horror, at least in the traditional sense -- FG's strength lies in Lahti's ability to switch moods and lead you on with his quirky writing style. The first half of this book was pretty engaging and even eerie at times. My favorite part was the necklace scene: If I had to rate all the chapters as individual "minisodes," then "Exquisite Corpse was definitely the best one. It actually really impressed me with how Lahti went about delivering the story; I even said, "Whoa, cool," a couple times near the end, but, of course, my awe was quickly soured once the rest of the story took over. (Once Junior stopped being a creepy little white boy, I immediately lost interest, honestly. How does it feel to have peaked as a three-year-old who said some fucked up shit over dinner with eldritch-horror-sized vegetables from your hot mom's graveyard slash garden).

There are also parts that're outrageous and made me snort. This novel has a dry wit and unique descriptive presentation, which made the plot at least refreshingly interesting -- you truly don't know what you're gonna get once a new chapter arrives. Lahti’s prose is relaxed but also a tolerable dose of hypnotic, allowing for surreal and viscerally palpable moments that make you sit up and go, "Oh, huh, we're talking about The Darkness now, I guess. Second ago we were talking about lemonade and drug addiction." There were a few of these instances that caught my eye and left me wanting more, but again, like real life, they all resulted in nothing major. Lahti prioritizes mundane realism over anything supernatural or theatric, which I was able to appreciate once I realized it's not about leading up to one specific event that happens, it's about the weird creepy shit white people get into.

This was a very white people book. In true American Gothic fashion, Lahti really plays with the idea of the Greeners "colonizing" the land with their foreclosure projects, leaving behind a string of faceless tenants and exploited workers already dealing with a shitton of personal problems -- not to mention unable to pay the exorbitant rent Heather and Vic charge for half their house's assets and space. It is a very white people book. Lahti mixes in some comedy in the text too, -- suburban Caucasian humor -- but there was also some microaggressive racism that just is never acknowledged or criticized, and I get the sense Lahti himself doesn't realize he's using a lot of loaded language and imagery. For example, there's a part near the end of the book where Lahti introduces us to these two Mexican migrant workers that Vic's hired to help him with his housing projects now that he's gotten old, but Lahti describes them as "cousins . . . with wide, brown faces scuzzed with thin beards and topped with shaggy black hair he'd only ever seen crushed beneath baseball caps." On top of that unflattering picture, Elvis and Jesus -- very stereotypical Mexican names -- first show up "waiting" for Vic like punctual servants because they "know his appreciation for promptness." They also live on his property -- and undoubtedly pay him rent out of their own measly paychecks -- and are characterized as cowardly, lecherous, and uneducated. I really didn't like the pervasive white gaze throughout this book.

That being said,Foreclosure Gothic seems to have a lot of negative reviews, which makes me sad. While I sympathize with many of other people's problems with the book, I think we really should give Lahti credit for being so experimental and taking a chance on such a weird story. Since this is his debut novel, I would say we should judge it according to its potential rather than its literary merit. Like all the abandoned and rotted houses the Greeners buy, I think it's best to focus on the bare bones and vision of what the writing could've been instead of the mess that's actually in front of us right now. Lahti certainly has some talent that just needs some polishing. And a better editor. Preferably someone who knows better than to include that purposeless and narratively incoherent, as well as plain boring, chapter about sea turtles. Sure, we can keep the grotto metaphor, but maybe don't portray your cucked main character driving for a long time on the highway while extremely inebriated + drugged and have there be no consequences; he gets off on the idea of his wife fucking a mutual friend and speeds up with each time she tells him about their relentless nut fests back in the good ole days. It wasn't tasteful.

[Saba Bajwa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is so many things - I burned through the beginning and immediately got pulled back into its vortex each time I picked it back up. Sharp prose and pacing that keeps you on your toes. It takes the evergreen premise “what if the American dream is bad?” and does something incredibly subtle and interesting with it. Consistently uncanny and surreal, at times unsettling, and always balanced in its approach to setting that tone. All of this delivered through the lens of traditional gender roles and what it means to create and achieve life goals, but never became heavy-handed in imbuing those themes. Cannot recommend this novel enough. Everyone should be talking about it!!!!!

[HP Bookcraft · Rating 3 out of 5]

Foreclosure Gothic reads like a house of rooms jumbled together--some family legacy, some ruined and rundown.

There is commentary here about the violence of permanent rentership and histories painted over in the hope of making money on a place. For the unmitigated greed of abusive landlordship, every renovation builds an eventual tomb.

Overall, a solid debut that had me wanting more tissue to fill out the structure of the story. This was also highlighted by the author's habit (and which is endemic among a lot of contemporary fiction) to describe scenes at the reader, rather than setting a scene and letting it unfold (in this case, even as a vignette).

[yosann]

I dont know how to feel about this. on one hand, I was extremely bored throughout like 90% of the book, but on the other, the ending was insane in a kinda good way. I didnt like the writing or the structure of the book or the way I was continuously edged by an actually interesting scary plot, but something about the ending made sense and felt like... wow.... no rating for this because im truly at a loss for words.

worst quote: "Whenever he smells the rice and beans, he finds, he becomes aroused, a rigid hard-on he must fight down before standing up again." (9.8%) why would I need to know this. less than 10% into the book btw how did I not drop this instantly.

[Gavin Fryer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Considering I grew up in the same that this book takes a lot of inspiration from I may not be as objective as I would like. Lahti's wordskill is amazing - for a debut I'm really impressed. I think my debut came off far clunkier. This book is more a series of vignettes than a novel I would say - which I personally enjoy. I guess that description does not preclude something from being a novel. I am not in love with the ending, but I also don't hate it. Really, I think he's trying to do something interesting. I think this is a very interesting book that I am glad to have read.

[Meredith Ladd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glad I understood this not actually being a horror story before I started. Whoever decided to market this as horror should be seriously questioned. Gothic does not equal horror historically, much more atmospheric and reminded me of Shirley Jackson. A bit of an A24 vibe.

I do like the eerieness in the background, decently well written. interesting snapshot/vignette writing. I feel tho that this is forgettable and didn't leave much of an impression of me. except maybe parts of the ending.

[gasbolina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a weird one. Even weirder that I usually have an idea of what to write on a review around halfway into an ARC, and this time I had nothing. So I guess here goes nothing.
Foreclosure Gothic alternates between feeling like the mid-second half of the second season of Twin Peaks and feeling like the Return, which is honestly a compliment. There are so many incredible “nothing” moments where I wasn’t really sure if I should be scared or not, waiting for something to happen, and I really enjoy that, but also, I feel like the bigger story here is that landlords are mostly cruel, evil people. I don’t think we’re supposed to root for the Greeners.
Incredibly poetic and as the title states, very gothic. I don’t know. I had a good time with it.

Thank you Netgalley and Harris Lahti!

[Jbear62 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prob 3.5. Finished this in like 3 days - came here for the “low rating/unforgettable unnerving ending” discourse on Twitter and happy I read it! It wasn’t as “scary” or as unsettling as maybe I expected but I enjoyed it all the same. Couple writing choices I shook my head at like reusing phrases or weird sentence structure that took me out of the moment. It is a scary idea to give up all your dreams and then your life is over tho. Ha ha.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. I'm going to think about this one for a while. The first half of this book is fantastic, with this sense of foreboding that just lies under the surface. It stumbles a tiny bit when the grown son takes over the perspective, but then as it comes back to the mother and father, you see how that perspective really ties the foreboding into the macabre that is reality. Cormac McCarthy vibes.