ebookreview | [ 687 ]

The House Saphir by Marissa Meyer

Genre:
Fantasy, Fantasy Romance, Romtasy, Netgalley, Young Adult, Retellings, Mystery

Publication Date:
November 4, 2025

Page Numbers:
432

Read/Finished Date:
Sepber 20th, 2025 - Septembe 21st, 2025

Rating:
DNF'ed @ 40%

Premise:

From the #1 New York Times bestselling "Queen of Fairytale Retellings" and author of Cinder and Heartless, this is the tale of Bluebeard as it's never been told before—a thrilling romantasy and murder mystery.

Mallory Fontaine is a fraud. Though she comes from a long line of witches, the only magic she possesses is the ability to see ghosts, which is rarely as useful as one would think. She and her sister have maintained the family business, eking out a paltry living by selling bogus spells to gullible buyers and conducting tours of the infamous mansion where the first of the Saphir murders took place.

Mallory is a self-proclaimed expert on Count Bastien Saphir—otherwise known as Monsieur Le Bleu—who brutally killed three of his wives more than a century ago. But she never expected to meet Bastien's great-great grandson and heir to the Saphir estate. Armand is handsome, wealthy, and convinced that the Fontaine Sisters are as talented as they claim. The perfect mark. When he offers Mallory a large sum of money to rid his ancestral home of Le Bleu's ghost, she can’t resist. A paid vacation at Armand’s country manor? It’s practically a dream come true, never mind the ghosts of murdered wives and the monsters that are as common as household pests.

But when murder again comes to the House Saphir, Mallory finds herself at the center of the investigation—and she is almost certain the killer is mortal. If she has any hope of cashing in on the payment she was promised, she’ll have to solve the murder and banish the ghost, all while upholding the illusion of witchcraft.

But that all sounds relatively easy compared to her biggest learning to trust her heart. Especially when the person her heart wants the most might be a murderer himself.

Review:

The House Saphir was one of my most anticipated reads for 2025 and I was excited to have scored an ARC. A gothic retelling of the French tale of 'Bluebeard' with murderous ghosts, witches, and a storyline meant to grab the reader until the very end. Unfortunately, the latter failed for me. I found the tale boring, the characters unlikeable, and I was uncertain about my feelings toward the romance. I suppose I had a lot of expectations for the romance and it just failed to deliver.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for the ARC. All review opinion are mine.