The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts

A Novel

By: Kim Fu

Narrated by: Eunice Wong

A Most Anticipated Book of 2026 from TIME, Book Riot, and Chicago Review of Books

From the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century comes The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts—an eerie, spellbinding novel of grief and guilt, with a razor-sharp eye for the absurdity and melancholy of the internet age.

In the aftermath of her mother's death, Eleanor is unmoored. For years, her mother orchestrated every detail of her life—from meals, to laundry, to finances—so that Eleanor could focus on her career as a therapist. Left to navigate the world on her own, Eleanor clings to her mother’s final directive: use her inheritance to buy a house.

Desperate to obey her mother one last time, but finding few options she can afford, Eleanor impulsively buys a model home in a valley-turned-construction site, a picturesque development steeped in a shadowy history. It feels like a fresh start, until the rain comes—an endless, torrential downpour. As water seeps in through the house’s cracks, the line between what is real and what is not begins to blur. Haunted by the stories of her clients, a stream of workmen and bureaucrats she can’t trust, and visions of ghosts from her past and present, Eleanor’s reality unravels, and she is forced to reckon with the secrets she’s buried and the dark choices she’s made.

Grief is a house you think you can furnish... until it starts rearranging you.

Eleanor is a therapist who is very much not thriving, and she relocates to this rain soaked, half built valley chasing stability that just never lands. Everything feels off in a way you cannot quite name. The rain does not stop. The house does not hold. And every system that is supposed to help keeps passing responsibility around like a cursed hot potato. The ghosts are there, sure, but they are not the point.

This is grief cooked low and slow, layered with millennial burnout and that creeping dread of realizing no one is coming to save you. The writing is sparse but it hits, like it is saying less on purpose so you feel more. It is less about what is haunting Eleanor and more about what happens when nothing catches you when you fall.

Come for the haunted house, stay for the quiet spiral. Or maybe just stay because it is already too late.

A bit confused - Spoiler

I think the story had a good plot. Some of the situations seemed like a jarring point but moved on without further insight or reflection. What was the basis of the vengeance presence? I get the Psychology, but one moment the house is “haunted” and then shifts to an obscure past relationship and present encounters. These encounters develop with meaning and are ripped away with no connection.

The story jumped around for me with no connection of why I should care.