Happy People Don't Live Here: A Novel

by Amber Sparks

In Amber Sparks’ highly anticipated debut novel, a reclusive mother and her saturnine daughter move into a haunted building brimming with eccentrics—and secrets.


Just past the edge of summer, Alice and Fern arrive at the Pine Lake Apartments—a former sanitorium occupied by an ensemble of peculiar neighbors and a smattering of ghosts. Among the living: a professional mermaid, a handyperson moonlighting as a medium, and an awkward professor of medieval studies. For the determinedly private Alice, Pine Lake seems the perfect place to hide herself and her daughter—until the day Fern finds a dead body in the dumpster. Intent on solving this mystery, and dodging warnings from her increasingly paranoid mother, Fern’s investigation digs up long-buried secrets that implicate each of her neighbors . . . and conjures a new party from beyond the grave. A darkly funny gothic tale, Happy People Don’t Live Here is an unforgettable novel from a “master of the fantastic” (Roxane Gay) that takes a sharp look at love, family, and the sometimes-dangerous myths we make for ourselves.

Genres: Horror, Mystery, Fiction, Audiobook, Supernatural, Fantasy, Ghosts

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 14, 2025

Reviews

[Kayla_Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Liveright for the opportunity to read and review this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A quick mystery full of quirky characters and secrets. Although this is listed as an adult debut this read like a YA novel more suited for my middle schooler. It had great potential but this just wasn’t for me. 2.5 stars rounded up.

[John Rennie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an unusual book, and from the other reviews I can see it's not to everyone's taste, but I loved it.

I can't help feeling many of the other reviewers have missed the point. This is not a children's book. It is a tribute to the children's mystery books many of us enjoyed in our childhood. In my case it was the Three Investigators series, but there are many such fondly remembered books.

It's true that Sparks has made her protagonist a ten year old girl, but this is nonetheless an adult story for adults (though I'm sure many young adults will enjoy it as well). It is of course a mystery, with a satisfying reveal at the end like all such mysteries, but it also brings in supernatural elements and it has a distinctive writing style that gives it an unusual feel. None of the speech has quotes so we are frequently left wondering if the character actually spoke out loud or if we are only reading their thoughts. I found this gave the story a slightly surreal feel, which is appropriate given that it's a somewhat surreal story.

If you enjoyed mystery books as a child then regardless of your age I think you will enjoy this and I wholeheartedly recommend it. If not ... well read it anyway!

[Elaine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Happy People Don't Live Here.

** Minor not happy spoilers ahead **

Alice and her precocious daughter, Fern, are recent arrivals at the Pine Lake Apartments, a former sanitorium now a rundown apartment.

The neighbors are quirky and offbeat, not to mention the non-living residents, the ghosts that roam the grounds and complex.

When Fern discovers a dead body in the dumpster, her investigation unearths her neighbors' secrets, including her mom's and a non-mortal friend.

But it is only through confronting your fears and worries can we make amends and move on with our life, in this world and the next.

I liked Fern, she was smart, courageous and not afraid to think outside the box.

But I wasn't a fan of the story.

First, I found the writing style distracting; it was very stream of consciousness and there are no quotation marks when a character speaks.

The tone is more YA-ish, not adult since Fern's POV dominates most of the narrative.

Second, I'm not sure what this the story is about.

Is it about Alice and her bad childhood and crappy parents that led her to into a relationship with an even worse man?

Is it about the past that always haunts us? Is that what the ghosts represent?

Is it about confronting your trauma and moving on despite your fears and worries?

Is it about how people are never really happy, but we just move on with life because that's what living is?

This is one of many books I've read in which the main character is running from an abusive relationship

I didn't like Alice because she was less developed and a standard trope, and the rest of the neighbors were more interesting like Mrs. Teasdale, Zillah, and Undine.

The ending is more HEA than I expected, but even not happy people deserve happy endings.

[Lisa Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do they have against quotation marks? They lose a full star over that idiocy! I don't want to have to figure out from context whether someone is saying or thinking something or whether it is the narration. Why are you making it harder for people to lose themselves in the story????

And it is a wonderful, quirky, sort-of-ghost story. It is funny and sweet and intriguing.

[Bdubs605 · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I’m a kid, I’m not delusional!” The heart of Happy People Don’t Live Here, Amber Sparks’ debut novel, is Fern – a 10-year-old who definitely does not (totally does) believe in fairies and is an amateur sleuth. Dragged around the country by her mother Alice, who is always running from something, they land in Pine Lake Apartments – a former sanatorium that now houses an interesting collection of characters. A mermaid, a woman made of glass (really has a condition where her bones break easily), an award-winning novelist, a medieval studies professor, and a whole bevy of ghosts. When Fern sees the dead body of someone she believes to be a mysterious resident, Detective Fern is on the case. Well, she has to be, because no one believes her.

The narrative is told from the alternating perspectives of Fern and Alice. As Fern starts uncovering the secrets of Pine Lake, Alice, slowly leads the reader through her secrets and why she thinks she is getting threatening mail. Fern, with the help of the handyperson, holds a séance, resulting in another interesting character populating the grounds.

Fern is fully captivating as a central character. We see Pine Lake and its characters through her eyes as she questions them, peeks through windows, and carefully follows the tropes in her favorite girl detective mystery books. What I was hoping for was more development of this cast of characters. Is the Mermaid real or just a performer in a large fish tank? She certainly spends enough time in the tub! Who is the glass lady, and what is she really dealing with? I had expected a full cast of characters, but we only get snippets, which left me wanting more.

That aside, the storyline is interesting and develops well through its two fully-fleshed central characters. Fans of the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley, especially those who also like a more fantastical storyline, may particularly enjoy this book. I look forward to reading more by this author.

Thank you to Liveright and NetGalley for an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review. My opinions and thoughts are my own.

[Brianna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kittentits meets My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry. Quirky little read full of ghosts, odd neighbors, and a whole lot of heart. I saw the vision and could appreciate it, but felt this could have been improved with a bit more editing. Sparks' voice doesn't feel too clear and the narrative meanders without purpose at times.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

October 2025 24 Hour Readathon

This might be the most poorly written and unhinged book I have ever read.

I did not feel it was ambitious or pretensious, but just bad.

Sentences were laughably awful. Streams of consciousness, flashbacks, and thoughts were unhinged and rambling.

Notable quotes/ moments:

“A baby that looked moist…”
“He was a painting..”
Kissing ghosts
Anything with Professor Noel

I originally gave it one star, but in writing this review. It might be entering so bad it is kind of good territory.

[Britt ⋆.˚ ☾⭒.˚ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Kind of like Flavia de Luce combined with Pushing Daisies. Quirky, offbeat, and self-aware, with a poetic sensibility to the prose. Refreshingly devoid of the sort of heavy tropification that annoys me so often these days. I am both slightly more and slightly less forgiving of the lack of quotation marks, having recently read Blood Meridian. If you like precocious child characters and a hint of the supernatural, give this a try--and keep in mind that the cover doesn't quite match the tone.

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the audiobook ARC

Ooof, this one was rough. I tried so hard to get into it and only got 30% of the way in. It felt very all over the place and I didn't really know what the plot was? I didn't like any of the characters and even though it was a short book, I couldn't get through it

[laurakellylitfit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Out October 14th, 2025
There are flashes of brilliance, especially in the way it captures grief, longing, and the surreal edges of everyday life. As a collection, it felt uneven. Some stories dazzled, others drifted. The tone shifts from experimental to intimate, and while that variety can be intriguing, it left me feeling a bit disconnected. I kept hoping for a stronger throughline or thematic anchor to tie it all together.

Still, Sparks knows how to write pain and beauty in equal measure. If you enjoy literary fiction that leans into the strange and the sorrowful, this is worth a read—just don’t expect every story to resonate.

Thank you to NetGalley and Liveright for this ARC!

[Devi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amber Sparks crafts a beautifully eerie and emotionally layered world in Happy People Don’t Live Here. The haunted sanatorium feels alive and breathing, its halls echoing with spectral humor, melancholy, and wit. The quirky ghostly ensemble adds charm and depth, creating a space where grief and absurdity meet in the most unexpectedly cozy way.

Fern, the ten-year-old prodigy with a razor-sharp wit, completely stole my heart. Her blend of intelligence and innocence keeps the story grounded even as the supernatural chaos unfolds. Alice, her mother, provides the emotional weight with her arc of guilt, love, and rediscovery adding warmth beneath the book’s eerie sheen.

That said, the narrative structure occasionally stumbles. The alternating POVs between Alice and Fern could have benefited from clearer transitions. Listening to the audiobook, I often found myself playing detective, trying to guess whose thoughts I was in. While Erin deWard’s narration beautifully captures the tone and atmosphere, the lack of dual narrators slightly blurs the distinction between mother and daughter.

Still, Sparks’ writing shines through with a lush, lyrical, and hauntingly tender. Her ability to weave emotion into the supernatural is what makes this story resonate long after the final page (or chapter) ends.

Would I Recommend it?
If you love paranormal cozy mysteries with clever young heroines, eerie settings, and heart-tugging family themes, Happy People Don’t Live Here deserves a place on your October spooky TBR list. It’s a ghost story with soul. A tale about love, loss, and the strange beauty of what lingers.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

📚 Recommended for Fans of: Ghostlight, The Graveyard Book, Finlay Donovan, and The Spirit Moves by Carol J. Perry.

👻 Ghostly Thoughts
Do you think dual narrators make audiobooks with multiple POVs more immersive? Or do you prefer a single voice to guide you through the story? Drop your thoughts in the comments. I’m dying to add your paranormal favorites to my listening list!

[jenna williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

kind of a more adult coraline vibe.

alice ate so much paper. like sooooo much paper.

also unrealistic to me that this woman who had this horrible abusive marriage that she has been literally on the run from for 10 years and then meets this rando professor and suddenly she’s getting married again after what? like 7 months tops of even knowing him? i don’t believe it. also were either of these marriages legal? cause there’s no way she actually got a divorce from the first one.

i don’t know man this was okay but i have questions.

[Melony · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn’t connect with the story or the characters.

[Carmen Lozano · Rating 2 out of 5]

A whole lot of nothing happened until the last 20 pages, you hate to see it

[Rebecca H.]

Delightful.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first 5 ⭐ read of 2026.

I say this all the time, but NetGalley does not do the books it features any favors. A bunch of Karens (with an inflated sense of the importance of their own opinions) choose books they would not otherwise have read and flock to Goodreads talking about how they didn't get it and what was this book supposed to be about and I didn't like the characters and who was this book supposed to be for? Absolutely worthless.

Anyways, I loved Happy People Don't Live Here. I thought it was charming, bohemian, and just a lot of fun to read. I don't usually read short stories, but I see that Sparks has a few collections - I might check them out, and if she sticks with novels I will pre-order every one.

[Sheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally a book I really liked and I know where I heard about it!
Thank you, Richard!
This is a really complex story masquerading as a YA mystery.
(I do not at all think it is intended to be YA, but I can see where people get that comparison)
A fantastic cast of characters all living in an apartment complex that was formerly a sanitorium---including10 year old Fern who is obsessed with mystery stories and can see ghosts. The main action of the story involves her attempts to solve the mystery of a body in the dumpster. Along the way we get glimpses into the lives of the other residents---the nonbinary handyperson who is also a medium; the building manager who was formerly a museum taxidermist and has many secrets; the professional mermaid; the "glass girl" with fragile bones; the cranky old wheelchair bound soldier/novelist; the akward antiquities professor; and Alice, Fern's neurotic mother who paints miniatures for a living and has a darkly secret past. Oh, also a corporeal ghost who comes to live on Alice's couch.
It's a little bit supernatural and a little bit mystery and a lot about family trauma and mother/daughter relationships. The writing is sort of stream of consciousness and weaves in and out of various character's heads---some people seem to have found that disconcerting but I thought it was very well done. (Note I listened to an audiobook so the lack of quotation marks did not color my experience)
In the end, I found the resolution to be a touch heavy handed, but I really enjoyed these characters and their stories. Would recommend to anyone who likes quirky reads with interesting characters and a little surreal supernatural element sprinkled in.

[Eric · Rating 1 out of 5]

A mother and daughter move into an old sanatorium turned apartment complex where the daughter claims she can see ghosts and discovers a body in the dumpster. Sounds like it could be interesting - quirky neighbors, mysteries, supernatural stuff, but the execution is a complete mess.

1/5 stars - The book feels totally disjointed. There’s no flow, no cohesion, just fragments that never come together into anything meaningful. The biggest issue is that Sparks doesn’t use quotation marks at all. You literally can’t tell if someone is actually speaking or if it’s internal monologue, and it makes everything confusing and frustrating to read. I get that some authors experiment with punctuation, but this isn’t clever, it’s just annoying.

Normally this is where I’d give a recommendation, but I just can’t in good conscience. Honestly, just read anything else. Hell I’ll take old reruns of Ghost Whisperer any day over this. At least you can tell when someone’s talking.

[Cindi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to the author, narrator, publisher and Net Galley for providing an ALC.

I think my hopes were too high on this one. A mom and daughter moved into an apartment in a building that used to be a sanitorium. When a dead body is found, the daughter decided to investigate and unearths secrets of her mom's and the neighbors. WE have living and non living characters.

The tone is very much a YA book not an adult mystery. The writing style is more stream of consciousness than actual dialog and it was very difficult to sort out what was actual dialog and was was just thoughts.

This felt a lot like many other books I've read recently, I didn't care for the writing style, and was disappointed to have such a YA feeling to the book. For me, this was not a winner.

2 stars

[Bookaholic__Reviews · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since I can't rate it 3.5.... 3 will have to do it. I think this story has some decent bones but execution was a bit all over the place. For as short as it was...there's a lot going on, dare say too much. I also don't think this is marketed correctly, I would definitely consider this more YA. I really enjoyed the setting and the quirkiness of the neighbors. I think the narrator did well with Fern's character.

I enjoyed it enough to consider reading more from Sparks in the future.


I received a copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Debba · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I don't know why anybody marked it as horror and I almost didn't read it because of that, because I can't handle that shit, but if they mean there are ghosts, that's as horror as it gets. It's not even remotely scary. The protagonist is a precocious 10 year old named Fern, who I found rather hilarious and endearing. She is quirky, her mother's quirky, the denizens of the apartment complex that used to be a sanatorium are all quirky--it's quirky. It reads like a YA novel, and maybe it would be rated more highly if it were marketed as such. Although every now and again an F-bomb is dropped, so that might be part of the problem. At any event I found it delightful and charming and a thoroughly enjoyable read.

[Summer (speaking_bookish) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25★

This has such a fun premise- I waited too long to review it properly and have forgotten many elements of the story. I’d like to reread it and see how I feel a second time around. I generally like a book with a group of random people all brought together in one place as was the case in this unusual apartment building set-up. Plus I always enjoy a paranormal element.

Considering how many things I tend to enjoy are present in this one, I wonder if this would get a higher rating after a reread.

[Georgi S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for the ARC and the chance to read this book in return for an honest review.
I had a hard time getting into this story and ended up calling it a DNF. I really enjoyed the premise of the book itself and would love to give it another go, however, the dialogue not being marked by traditional formatting was a huge struggle for me.
This is why I am rating it 4 stars, while I did not finish it I enjoyed what I did read even though I struggled. Thank you again to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

[Renee · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars

This writing style was like nails on a chalkboard to me. Full stream of consciousness ramblings with no quotation marks and, for me, sense. It was so hard for me to read, and just not enjoyable. If you like that sort of surreal storytelling, I would try this book. Maybe if this was just a short story it would have been a bit more palatable but this felt 600 pages long.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an advanced copy to form opinions from.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book: part Coraline, part Mermaids screenplay, plus a healthy dose of the novice sleuth archetype, with a little tuberculosis for good measure (because, what did John Green say, people?!) Highly enjoyable. Weird and macabre in all the best ways.

[Alyce Lomax · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good, quirky read. I struggled a bit with the style; this is the second book I’ve read in the last month or so that dispenses with quotation marks for dialogue so things feel kind of run-on and require a little more mental energy to read at least for me. I think if I hadn’t recently spent a lot of time in that style recently it wouldn’t have felt a bit tiring to read. Definitely worth checking out though. Its eccentric characters, one of whom is a very feisty ghost, as well as the surreality of the setting, makes it worthwhile.

[Ilana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable book - tender and smart and sweet and gut-wrenching and heartwarming all in equal measure, somehow.

[Blair Brandt · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 I enjoyed the characters and writing,disappointed in the ending. overall fast,enjoyable read.

[Letsreadagoodbook · Rating 3 out of 5]

This could have been better! I wasnt hipped on the little girl she was kinda annoying! I was hoping for more! more like a real ghost story idk wish it was more.

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Happy People Don’t Live Here is an odd, eerie, and often entertaining read. The setting is a quirky old apartment complex filled with eccentric tenants and a few lingering ghosts, which makes for a fun and slightly surreal backdrop. I enjoyed the strange cast of characters.
That said, while it kept my attention, I didn’t really get the point of it by the end. The story felt scattered, and I wasn’t sure what it was trying to say once the mystery wrapped up. It was entertaining in the moment, but it didn’t leave much of a lasting impression.
Overall, it’s an interesting and well-written story with plenty of weird charm, but one that left me a bit confused about its purpose.