What Moves the Dead

I've never read the original House of Usher story, and had no idea going into this book that it was something of a retelling. I'm not sure if that paints my opinion of this book any differently, other than the fact that as the characters revealed their names to be Usher I had an inkling that there was some homage going on. To be completely honest, what was happening throughout the book felt painfully obvious, especially from seeing the book's cover and reading just into the intro chapter. Still, I enjoyed the journey the main character took me on and how I was following their thoughts. The pacing felt great and I loved the inner monologue as I was strung along–This is both a praise and an unfortunate feature as I feel I would've loved the book more had there truly been something hair-raising on the other side of the end reveal. Still, the reveal at the end of the book was sufficient enough so I'm not going to mar the book for that. My one and only confusion was actually about the land Galatia that the main character hails from, and their very overt disdain for America. While I enjoyed these flavors and was actually curious to know more about Galatia especially, I felt wholly confused by these inclusion only because I thought they were leading to something. I'm not going to get hung up on things which amount to character quirks and worldbuilding, I just got an impression due to their prominence that they were going to amount to something significant. This small note aside, I would gladly recommend this to anyone who wants to read something haunting yet familiar.