Tag: Set in Croatia

Natalie Kikić’s The Haunting of Lavender House has nearly all the ingredients I want from a gothic novel: a crumbling ancestral house surrounded by lavender fields, a family history full of secrets, a centuries-old curse, Croatian folklore, and a woman returning to a place she has never truly known. Petra arrives at Lavender House after her mother’s death expecting to discover the grandmother she has always been told is dead, only to find herself confronting a family history that reaches back more than a century. The premise is intriguing, and the Croatian setting offers an opportunity for a gothic story that feels distinct from the familiar haunted houses and old estates that populate the genre. Unfortunately, I found the execution much less compelling than the setup promised.

One of my biggest problems began with Luka, who appears to be positioned almost immediately as a romantic interest for Petra. The book leans into the enemies-to-lovers setup, but this is one of those cases where the “enemies” portion made it very difficult for me to care about the eventual romance. Luka is simply rude to Petra from the moment they meet, and the explanations for his hostility never made his behavior feel justified. He has preconceived ideas about her and her relationship with her grandmother, but those assumptions don’t give him a free pass to treat her badly.