Book Review of The House Saphir by Marissa Meyer

 

Book Review of The House Saphir by Marissa Meyer 

The House Sephir by Marissa Meyer, I ran across this book because I really love a fairy tale retelling, and I wasn’t really certain how retelling or re-imagining it really was. Now, Marissa Meyer—I had picked up her Lunar Chronicles with Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, Winter, and I think there was a little in-between or something like that within that series as well. 

Yes, Stars Above was a 4.5 and Fairest was 3.5, so little novellas in between. I don’t think I got to the novellas, but I did read the full main four. I thought they were great. So when her name came up, I definitely wanted to try to get this book and see what we thought.

The Queen of fairy tale retellings is back. Number one New York Times bestselling author Marissa Meyer weaves the tale of Blue Beard as it’s never been told before. This is a thrilling romantic murder mystery perfect for fans of Meyer’s Cinder and Heartless.

Mallalerie 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 poultry living by selling bogus spells to gullible buyers and conducting tours of the infamous mansion where the first of the Saphir murders took place.

Mallalerie is a self-proclaimed expert on Count Bastian Safir, otherwise known as Monsieur Leblanc, who brutally killed three of his wives more than a century ago. But she never expected to meet Bastian’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 Mallalerie a large sum of money to rid his ancestral home of Leblanc’s ghost, she can’t resist. 

A paid vacation at Armand’s country manor is 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 of Fear, Mallalerie 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 the while upholding the illusion of witchcraft. But all that sounds relatively easy compared to her biggest challenge: learning to trust her heart, especially when the person her heart wants the most might be the murderer himself.

I enjoyed this book, but I did have the audiobook. This is a personal quirk for me—every time the narrator would say “she,” they would exaggerate it to the nth degree, to the point that it got kind of grating on my nerves. That is a personal thing. 

I don’t feel as though that was a negative in the writing style, but for the narrator, that point was a bit annoying. It was just the way they would pronounce certain French words. 

Now, I am by no means a French expert; I would probably say I am elementary at best. I practice my Duolingo to whatever credit that is. But every time she said it, I was just like, girl, please calm down. I don’t think it’s that intense of a pronunciation.

That was one of my critiques, but it’s really not of the book itself. The book itself was actually pretty fun. We start with Mallalerie about to conduct a ghost tour at this house that she’s really not supposed to be touring. 

She has already taken payment, so she’s got it kind of set up like a ghost tour, and there are certain moments she does certain things which trigger this or that to happen. One of the things is she actually can see ghosts.

In the house Saphir—which is not only the people of the lineage Saphir but the physical house itself—they don’t spend a lot of time at this particular house. So we start here, but most of the book does not take place here. There is a ghost tied to this house: the first wife, Lady Saphir. 

I loved her. She was fantastic. I really enjoyed getting to know her because she’s a very dramatic lady. After she births her first child, a son, she falls ill, which I definitely think is the count’s doing. 

Then all of a sudden, she’s dead—with a sword through the heart—but he doesn’t really tell anybody and moves on to marry more people. He moves out to his manor estate that is out in the middle of nowhere and marries two more people who also pass away.

The fourth wife, Gabrielle, gets away, but I think she’s also part witch herself. That does come into play later in the book. Even though Count Saphir married this fourth wife, he didn’t get to kill her. Without giving too many spoilers, I thought it was pretty good and worth the read. Trafine—the first wife—was really fun. 

When we get out to the manor house, there are two other wives: one that’s like a wilting-flower sort of wife and one that’s like a drunkard sort of wife. I don’t know how ghosts can be drunk, but she is constantly imbibing wine, which seems to trigger her to be pretty well toasted most of the time. Trafine, even though she was tied to the house Saphir, also seems tied to her wedding ring.

When Mallalerie and Armand go out to the country manor to try to rid this manor of Leblanc’s ghost, Monsieur Leblanc is haunting the estate once again and wreaking havoc. Armand just needs somebody to help, so he finds the Fontaine sisters. Ni, Mallalerie’s sister, was a decent support character, but forgettable. I feel like Mallalerie was a very dynamic character, but Ni didn’t do much until closer to the end. The ghost wives were more important in my opinion than Ni was.

Overall, I’d probably give this a 4.25 because I was entertained. There were a couple of points where I was like, “Get over it” or “Move on,” because some cringey moments made me fast-forward a little. 

Armand is very cool but a little flimsy as a character. I wanted him to be more dynamic. There are a couple of cute moments between him and Mallalerie, but she’s the type who doesn’t trust anyone except her sister. She feels like she can’t trust herself or others. When Armand tries to break his family curse and admit his feelings for her, she insists it’s just a job.

There are other monsters—a werewolf-like creature, for instance. The beginning of the book includes a little index of various creatures, which was cool. I wish I had the physical copy to refer back to it when they appeared. I also don’t know much about Blue Beard, so I’m not sure how accurate this is as a retelling. I personally thought of it more as a reimagining.

Overall, it was pretty fun. I did love diving back into a Marissa Meyer book. It has been a while since The Lunar Chronicles. One note—on Goodreads, I didn’t see the summary of The House of Fear by Marissa Meyer, though it lists 432 pages and a publication date of November 4th, 2025. Most readers seem to give it around four stars, which matches my rating.

A review mentioned it’s a post-facto retelling of Blue Beard, taking place a century after the events of the fairy tale when the last descendant hires a witch to rid his mansion of evil. That sounds accurate.

With all of that being said, I’m going to leave it here. I know I am just getting back to doing my reviews for November, but honestly, I overwhelmed myself in October with too many books. 

I’ve written 90% of those reviews and still have a few left to finish. November is fairly light with about twelve books so far. I may also go back and review some from October that were worthy of reviews. I do have one I want to review, but I’ll only give it three stars—we have to talk about it.

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