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Sapphic YA Romance in a Haunted House: The Girls Are Never Gone by Sarah Glenn Marsh

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The Girls Are Never Gone cover

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The Girls Are Never Gone by Sarah Glenn Marsh is a YA supernatural horror novel. Its protagonist, Dare, is just beginning her summer internship restoring an old house and recovering from a breakup with her boyfriend. She plans to use the summer to launch a podcast about the house’s history of mysterious drownings. While investigating, she teams up with Quinn, who is possibly haunted and definitely cute. The book shines in its interpersonal and representational qualities, but sadly falls short of the mark as a genre novel.

As far as character writing, this one excels. Dare is openly bisexual and diabetic. Her diabetes clearly impacts her life day to day, and is portrayed as a challenge but not an impediment. Her relationship with Quinn, meanwhile, is mostly cute and genuine, with the two sharing sweet moments. Occasionally, conflicts between them would feel stale and forced, but that plays more into plotting issues discussed later.

It’s not only the central romance that was sweet. Dare and Quinn intern alongside Holly. Although the girls don’t always agree, they develop a nice friendship. In her investigation, Dare meets an older woman who casually mentions a wife and child, adding to a sense of queer normativity. Most of the characters in the book are women: protagonists, antagonists, secondary characters. It offers the book a sort of cozy feminism. Women can indeed be heroes and love interests, but they can also just exist on the sidelines.

Unfortunately, as a genre read, this one fell flat for me. For one thing, there were way too many past characters. It might have worked better if I’d read it as a print novel instead of listening to the audiobook, maybe seen pictures or something similar to develop them. Instead, it was a litany of dead and missing girls without much context to any of them, and I had a difficult time keeping track of which one did what when.

Also, for a spooky story, it wasn’t that spooky. This is partly because Dare is a skeptic—which is a fine trait to have, until it leads to a character who spends two-thirds of the book oblivious to something readers know from the summary. To me, it felt like nothing was happening because the main character actively ignored the plot, making for a frustrating and sometimes plodding read. At times the story even seemed to cut away from the most dramatic moments. I’m not a big fan of romance as a primary genre, so this made for a less-than-stellar reading experience for me.

Trigger warnings: murder, supernatural

Lack-of-trigger warning: nothing bad happens to the dog 🙂

Danika reviews The Girls Are Never Gone by Sarah Glenn Marsh

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The Girls Are Never Gone cover

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I’m very picky when it comes to horror books, mostly because I’m a wimp and get freaked out very easily. When the weather starts to get a little chillier, though, I start to crave creepy, witchy, autumn-y books, and that’s when I start eyeing the horror section. The Girls Are Never Gone was a great choice because a) it’s sapphic b) it’s more atmospheric and creepy than all-out terrifying and c) there’s a water element to the haunting. I love haunted house books, especially The Haunting of Hill House (here’s my review of how it’s absolutely sapphic), and I’ve also been intrigued by underwater horror ever since I took an creepy deep sea museum exhibit ride as a kid. I mean, it was an elevator, but it was unsettling.

But you probably came here to read about the book. The Girls Are Never Gone is an old-fashioned haunted house story, but one with a queer disabled main character.

Dare was cohost of a popular YouTube ghost-hunting show with her boyfriend -but then he broke up with her, and now she has to start over. Her new project is a solo podcast where she investigates one story in longform. She’ll be investigating Arrington Estate, where years ago, a girl drowned in the lake on the property, and it’s been rumoured to be haunted ever since. Dare got an internship to help restore the house into a museum, and she intends to use this access to dig up the history of this place.

Dare is an interesting take on a ghost-hunter, because she’s both skeptical and hopeful about the existence of ghosts. She had to face her own mortality very young, when she realized she was dependent on medical intervention for her Type 1 diabetes (the author also has type 1 diabetes). Now, in addition to the medical equipment she keeps on hand, she also has Waffles: a not quite as useful service dog whose alerts are unreliable. She has had an interest in the afterlife for many years, and she would love to see a real ghost–but despite all of the investigations she’s done for the channel, she’s never found one. Dare looks for scientific explanations first. Still, she brings a whole collection of ghost-hunting equipment with her to the house, and she’s serious about the investigation.

There, she meets a fellow volunteer, Quinn, who also happens to the commenter who alerted her to the possible haunting–oh, and she’s a cute girl. Then there’s the third member of the volunteer team, Holly. All three of them develop an instant, easy rapport that serves as a nice contrast to the creepiness of the house.

Arrington Estate is a decrepit, falling apart house that always seems to be leaking water from the ceilings, regardless of weather. It’s beside a lake that seem more like an ocean: it has mysterious currents that make it unsafe to swim in, and it seems to be getting ominously closer to the house.

It’s a slow build, both in terms of the haunting and the slowburn romance. We first really get to know the characters, with a few weird things happening in the background with the house, like a glowing light in the middle of the lake or a glimpse of something in the mirror. It’s atmospheric, and even before anything particularly scary happens, there’s a real sense of Arrington Estate as a character with its own personality and motives.

I really enjoyed the podcast element — it reminded me of Indestructible Object by Mary McCoy (review), which is another queer YA with a bisexual main character who had a project with her ex-boyfriend and had to start over when they broke up! In both of these books, they nail the podcast excerpts: they really “sound” like podcasts–and ones I would listen to! The creepy atmosphere, on the other hand, reminded me of The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould (review), which I also really enjoyed.

I am very happy that sapphic YA horror is beginning to have enough titles to choose from! This is a perfect read for a breezy fall afternoon.

Certain things that will always mark a house’s age, things human hands can’t change or erase: echoes of laughter, late-night secrets shared, wishes made, arguments had, all absorbed into the walls. A house remembers everything it witnessed, down to its very foundation. And Arrington seems to have a particularly long memory— of what, I’m not sure yet.