This is the tale of Bluebeard as it’s never been told before–a romantasy 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 challenge: learning to trust her heart. Especially when the person her heart wants the most might be a murderer himself.

I had high hopes for The House Saphir — I’m always up for a good fairy tale retelling, and I loved this author’s Lunar Chronicles series. Unfortunately, weak world-building, odd word choices, and an unconvincing plot all resulted in a reading experience that was squarely so-so.

The story revolves around Mallory, a con artist from a line a witches who lost her own powers due to a spell gone wrong during her youth. Now, she and her sister support themselves through fake card readings and unauthorized tours of a supposedly haunted house (complete with cheap knock-off heirlooms that they sell to their gullible customers). Not everything is fake, however; the one magical gift that Mallory still has left is the ability to see and communicate with ghosts. At the Saphir mansion, home of the notorious murderer known as Monsieur Le Bleu, Mallory communicates with Trephine, the first of his three murdered wives.

After a botched tour, Mallory and her sister end up hired by Armand Saphir, descendent of the murderer, to rid his country estate of the evil spirit of Le Bleu. And despite having no actual ability to carry out an exorcism, they take the job. After all, money is tight, and they’ve been threatened with arrest for fraud. So… take the job, fake it for a while, get paid, and take off.

All sorts of complications ensue. The world of The House Saphir include an array of monsters, who’ve apparently reentered the mortal realm once the veil fell years earlier. There’s a religion that worships the seven gods, and witches and magic are quite real. But it all is rather muddled. The religion, the monsters, the common beliefs, the reasons for why things are as they are — nothing gets much explanation, and feels like the thinnest of plot scaffolding, only there to explain Mallory’s actions.

I was baffled by the setting. This is a fictional world, European-esque but not actually Europe or countries that exist in our world — but characters have French names and speak French, and a visiting magician named Constantino speaks Italian (“buona sera!”). Why?

One relatively minor thing that bugged me throughout — the author’s use of the word “boy” when talking about a young man. When Mallory pounces on someone coming up behind her, she’s startled to see a “boy”, which made me assume this was someone in the 10 -12 year old range. Nope — the various “boys” Mallory encounters all appear to be upwards of 18 or thereabouts. Annoying, and this took me right out of the story each time.

Overall, I was underwhelmed by the plot and character development, and found the action sequences pretty messy as well. On a positive note, I enjoyed the ghost wives quite a bit, and appreciated that their scenes tended to add a touch of humor to otherwise grim events.

The House Saphir appears to be a stand-alone, although I could imagine a spin-off involving the monster hunters. Perhaps future books might provide more substance for the world-building.