Book Review: How Not to Renovate a Haunted House

Title: How (Not) to Renovate a Haunted House

Author: Jenny L. Howe

Date: July 21, 2026

Publisher: Delacorte

ISBN: 978-0-593-80912-9

Quote: "[M]y favorite parts of really old places are the absurd ghost stories."

Amity's divorced parents, who had a really big house in California, decide to sell the house so that Amity's mother can (drag Amity along with her and) move into a colonial-era house in Massachusetts. If Amity wants to go to college "for free," she has to attend the college where her mother teaches. Amity's spent her high school years preparing for college in California; at the last minute she finds out that she has to go to college in Massachusetts instead. But at least the house comes with an absurd ghost story, which is being promoted on the Internet by a boy Amity and her best high school friend find attractive. 

Oh, for more young adult novels where (realistically) a mere boy's merely attractive face doesn't matter to the protagonist; where, if she must pair off, she pairs off with a boy after she's actually got to know a few different ones. Or (shudder, quake) at seventeen she thinks it might be a good idea not to try to be half of a couple until she's had some practice living on her own, the way I did at seventeen, and this does not mean that she's saying no to romance or marriage or motherhood; it means that she's saying yes to life while she waits for boys her age to start to show some indication of the kind of men they're going to become. Or, if she likes the boy's face on the Internet, she learns that that doesn't mean she'll like him in real life; in real life another boy might be more interesting. Or she has her adventure on her own, and likes a boy, and might have a romance with him later, but the girl's adventure is a story in its own right, independent of any romance she may also have, that year or ten years later. In real life, sharing an adventure is a good way to get acquainted with another person, but in real life every adventure every young person has does not fit by a precise, prearranged formula into a romance. 

But this is a sweet romance. The ghost is, in the reality of the story, real. The girl and the boy are mutually attracted. The girl doesn't seem interested in any of the classes she's taking or the jobs for which they might prepare her; like the protagonists of Teen Romances of 1950, she really just wants to reproduce. The kissing is choreographed to fit in with the laying of the ghost. For me the progress of Teen Romance might be plausible by itself (a few college boys are as nice as Theo, who has a tattoo just to offset what a devoted son and sensitive boyfriend he is) and suspension of disbelief in the ghost story might be possible, but the synchronization of the two plots is too much suspension of disbelief at once. For some readers that's not a problem. It's a cute, clever, slow burn romance in which a long-ago ghost story is brought to light and the ghost is laid to rest...or at least one of them is. There could easily be a sequel. 

The ghost story is mild, like the romance. There are ghosts, plural, and one of them is righteously indignant, but their motivation is to tell their story rather than to hurt anyone. 

As entertainment, this more-rom-com-than-horror story should get a high school student through a few study periods, without provoking any embarrassing emotional reactions. I miss the days when Delacorte was publishing the sort of novels Nat Hentoff and Barbara Danziger were (then) writing, but even readers who want to be activists don't always want to be spurred on. There's something to be said for novels that help us relax, too, especially during high school study periods.