| Title | : | The Once Yellow House |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 294 |
| Publication | : | First published March 9, 2023 |
Questions abound: what was the exact cause of death of so many victims? What role did married couple Hope and Thomas Gloucester play in the massacre? What exactly went on at the property know as the 'Once Yellow House', where the Retinue were encamped?
And are the rumours true -- were the Retinue really a cult?
So far, these questions have gone unanswered.
Until Now.
Bram Stoker Award nominated author Gemma Amor (DEAR LAURA) has been granted exclusive access to never before seen documents collated from a variety of sources, including entries and sketches from the alleged personal scrapbook of Hope Gloucester herself, verbatim transcriptions of recorded conversations, emails, articles, and letters, and, driven by a desire to help shed light on a mystery that has affected the lives of so many, has compiled them into the world's first coherent account of the Yellow Massacre.
What follows is a collection of somewhat surreal first-hand descriptions of a catastrophe that seems to be part truth, part rumour, party fantasy, and one might even suggest: part performance art.
The Once Yellow House Reviews
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Check out my
Interview with Gemma Amor at Grimdark Magazine.
My complete review of The Once Yellow House is published at
Grimdark Magazine.
Religious occultism collides with the color yellow in Gemma Amor’s latest horror novel, The Once Yellow House. The Bram Stoker Award-nominated author adopts an entirely epistolary format for The Once Yellow House, with the story told through a combination of diary entries, newspaper clippings, and transcripts of audio recordings.
The plot of The Once Yellow House focuses on the events leading up to the Yellow Massacre of 2020, in which 347 members of a cult known as “The Retinue” were brutally killed on a property in upstate New York called the Once Yellow House. The Once Yellow House was owned by a married couple, Thomas and Hope Gloucester. Thomas is presumed dead from the Yellow Massacre, while Hope is now missing and needed for questioning.
Thomas originally started The Retinue online, gaining a following that somehow expanded exponentially after he and Hope moved into the Once Yellow House. Before long, cult members gathered to camp out in their yard, treating Thomas as a divine figure.
This epistolary style of The Once Yellow House is especially effective at revealing bits of information, allowing readers the chance to put together pieces of the puzzle. Gemma Amor also makes brilliant use of this format to delve into the minds of her two main protagonists: the presumably widowed Hope and one of the few cult survivors, known only as Once Yellow Kate. Hope and Kate are both murky about the events leading up to the Yellow Massacre and must rely on each other’s perspectives to piece together the full story.
I particularly enjoyed the discussions between Hope and Kate comparing art and religion. As an artist, Hope interprets many of the occultist practices in terms of artforms, noting how both art and religion embrace symbolism. Moreover, both famous artists and religious leaders earn followers who fervently await their every word.
I also appreciated Gemma Amor’s incorporation of artwork throughout the book, which provides another dimension of disquiet as we try to grasp the true nature of Hope’s situation. All of the artwork in The Once Yellow House, including the cover, were made by the author herself.
Through her believable and somehow relatable characters, Gemma Amor explores themes of emotional abuse and the corruption of love. The unsettling elements of The Once Yellow House span a range of psychological and cosmic horror, as well as truly grotesque body horror. This book is definitely not for the squeamish.
The Once Yellow House also serves as Gemma Amor’s love letter to the color yellow. Yellow is the color of happiness, light, energy, and friendship, but also the color of caution, cowardice, and deceit. I enjoyed reading Hope’s musings on these multifaceted meanings of yellow in art. Hope is particularly attracted by Vincent van Gogh’s prolific use of yellow in his paintings, reflecting on how his choice of color scheme mirrored his evolving mental state.
Gemma Amor’s writing is perfect, as usual, with a keen attention to detail. As an upstate New York native, I was pleasantly surprised to see that she even used our correct telephone area code in the novel.
Gemma Amor is one of my favorite horror authors, and The Once Yellow House only reinforces that view. The Once Yellow House is both a brilliantly constructed puzzle and a first-rate work of art. -
Told through multi media, and presented in the form of an edited manuscript with footnotes and illustrations, The Once Yellow House looks into how 300+ cultists were brutally, unexplainably murdered. Most of the story is told through diary entries, and a back and forth recorded conversation between the two sole survivors.
There’s a lot of very imaginative body horror, and some very unsettling moments with the husband and the house both transforming rapidly. It’s also an ode to the color yellow, and so there was a lot of very vibrant imagery that I was able to picture in my head as I read.
It’s also an examination into a deeply toxic marriage, and I honestly wish we got more of that. The MC and her husband moves into this sorta haunted house, and she starts to learn that he isn’t who she thought he was. It’s good, but that’s my favorite trope in a story and I eat that stuff up 😂
I wish it was maybe 100 pages shorter. There’s a big section in the middle that I really think hinders the story. It’s a back and forth convo, and it’s brought up by the one person that we really should move on with the story, why so much backdrop, why so much build up, and I agree 😂 it honestly ruined any tension that had been built up prior, this constant urging of like “come on let’s go let’s get to the good stuff”, so that when the good stuff finally happened it was a bit of a let down after all the build up.
Overall, still recommend and really enjoyed it! -
On November 19th 2020, hundreds of cult members who followed "The Great God Thomas" died in the Yellow House Massacre in Lestershire, New York. The circumstances surrounding these deaths are mysterious and gruesome, and only two survivors are left to tell the tale. This story is related in turns through diary entries of Thomas' wife Hope, recounting the events leading up to the massacre, and transcriptions of an interview that takes place two years after between Hope and the one member of the cult who managed to escape.
There's a lot to unpack here about love, art, the senses, and abuse. Hope is a victim of domestic violence even before Thomas achieves his status as cult leader, and I had a lot more sympathy for her than I did for Kate, who vacillates between being Hope's therapist and her self-righteous accuser throughout the interviews. I think the book could have benefited from having some sections from the POV of Kate during the events of 2020.
Although this all sounds pretty straightforward as far as story goes, The Once Yellow House is one of the most insanely gory and chaotic pieces of fiction I have read. Chaotic not in the structure or my ability to understand what was happening, but in the utter insanity of what is being related. I certainly respect and can admire it, but ultimately, this book was a bit too over-the-top for my liking. There's mold and spores and lots of bodily fluids, and some of the combinations of sex and body horror just made this a bit too much for me, particularly a scene where . I mean, go ahead and call me a prude, but ick, just no.
The story that I had been enjoying ultimately got lost in all of the gross, and although it did circle around in the end, I didn't really buy that either. -
I couldn’t even begin to try to describe this book in a way that sounds coherent, but I’ll take a stab:
The Once Yellow House is an epistolary horror novel about a cult, a brutal massacre, social media, the loss of self, the loss of control, the loss of a child, the death of a marriage, emotional abuse, the power of shapes, art, geometric patterns and colors (you heard me right). It has elements of psychological horror, body horror, cult horror, cosmic horror … you name it.
I’m really not sure how Amor managed to pack all these things into one novel without the entire story collapsing under its own weight and ambition, but she largely succeeds. It’s an extremely weird and wild ride with heavy themes and deep philosophical concepts that you simply need to experience for yourself. Picture the band Tool in novel form, and you’re in the right ballpark.
Gemma Amor continues to impress me more and more with each release. She’s brilliant and extremely reliable, and proved it yet again. -
Boy, this had a lot going on... psychological horror, body horror, cosmic horror, emotional abuse, corruption of love. Amor packs a lot into this one, and as usual, does it well. Not my favorite of hers so far but still good and solid, nonetheless.
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The Once Yellow House is both a fascinating story and a reading experience. Told through audio transcripts, diary entries, and a personal favorite: letters to the editor, the story is given depth by footnotes likely to send a reader down a Wikipedia rabbit hole from which they will emerge with a deeper knowledge of obscure European painters and the color yellow.
The Once Yellow House was the centerpiece of an overnight cult fixated on Thomas – known by his followers as The Great God Thomas. Imagine your completely normal (outside of the abuse) spouse has secretly cultivated a following of thousands, espousing cherry-picked religious doctrine, without your knowledge. He then buys a house well past the tipping point of submitting to nature, also behind your back.
Kate was a member of the cult searching for answers from one of the few to survive the massacre that would be the end of the cult, known as the Retinue. Hope, a fellow survivor and wife of The Great God Thomas, is the reclusive target of her search. Upon meeting, the story is revealed via audio transcripts of their conversation interspersed with Hope’s diary entries. Thomas’ metamorphosis from man to god is endlessly enjoyable. There is no limit to Amor’s talent in describing the various manifestations; the visuals are disgusting, but in a way that will leave a smile on your face.
Hope guesses at the how and why without settling on a singular explanation. The story benefits from this ambiguity. The best stories get you thinking, planting seeds of possibility and leaving you to tend the garden, to see what grows.
The Once Yellow House is the perfect book to pull you out of a reading rut if you find yourself in one. It’s different. It’s fun. And, like when you’re thinking of buying a new car you will notice that model everywhere...you will notice yellow. And triangles. But mostly yellow.
(I don’t leave star reviews within my own genre, but this is great go buy it!) -
My full review will appear in an upcoming community sampler from Wintry Monsters Press. But here's the bottom line: "The Once Yellow House is an epistolary novel of cultic and cosmic horror that seamlessly entangles diary entries and audio transcripts at the forefront. When things get weird, they get really weird—Amor does not hold back in that regard. There are elements of body horror, domestic disturbance, imprisonment and mania, eco horror, and more to be found in this novel equivalent to the found footage genre of film. It’s wonderfully written, gross, unhinged, strange, and deliciously addictive."
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4.5 stars! This book is great!
Full disclosure: religious cults are one of the few things that really get under my skin in the horror genre. (And real life.) So the story was bound to speak to me at least a little bit. But on top of that, it was well written, strange, full of concepts I haven’t seen a million times and all sorts of insane body horror. The book was also presented in different formats, like transcripts of interview audio of two of the main characters and excerpts of the diary of one of those characters.
The weirdness and unsettling atmosphere start on page one and are unrelenting. I tried not to speed through this too quickly and instead slow down and savor it, but the short chapters made it so easy to keep reading and I was fascinated by the story so I finished it in a couple of days. I love horror books about artists and weird, scary things happening to them. This was just the kind of thing I look for.
The author does a great job of creating a situation in which the main character is stuck in an abusive relationship. However, there was a very specific moment in which I absolutely could not believe that she made the choice that she did, given the information (and opportunity) that she had. This disbelief would happen again, but the story was so fascinating to me and the relationship so complicated that I was willing to look past it. And again, the author put the effort in to build this tense atmosphere around an impossible situation that can’t be explained away.
You will get Cosmic horror, fungal horror, and body horror in this book in addition to the cult stuff. There’s interesting rhetoric around the color yellow, art and even mathematics and geometric shapes.
My only issue really was that Kate’s feelings towards Thomas seemed very inconsistent. She waffled between seeing him as a horrible, abusive person and suddenly claiming that there must be good in him somewhere. Which is it? It made her character confusing. That’s why I gave the book a 4.5 instead of a perfect 5. This author seems very skilled, though, so there may be something I missed, like a strategy behind some of Kate’s behavior in the interview sections. I may revisit the book at some point with a second read.
Highly recommend this for horror fans and readers who like weird stories. It was one of my favorite books of the year! I’m going to seek out more of Amor’s work right away.
TW: Animal harm, domestic abuse, depression, miscarriage -
3.5
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Y’all, this book was incredible. Read this spooky fucking novel if you love:
✔️CULTS
✔️ FOUND FOOTAGE HORROR
✔️ GORE
✔️ ART
✔️ HOUSE OF LEAVES
✔️ MIXED MEDIA STYLE WRITING
When I opened this bad boy up, I knew I was going to love it; it’s basically my perfect book. Mixed media is my favorite style of writing. This story is told through diary entries, newspaper articles, audio recording transcripts, and it even includes foot notes which reminded me a lot of house of leaves (don’t worry though, this one isn’t difficult to read.)
Not only that, but one of the major plots of this book is centered around a cult, and who doesn’t love reading about those?
Fair warning though: this is gross and gory and fucked up in the best way; we get a look at domestic abuse and how that slowly impacts a person over time. It’s a love story in a way, and one that I highly recommend you pick up. Gemma is absolutely brilliant, and the whole time that I was reading this I was thinking about how much time this must have taken to do research on the art knowledge aspect of this, or maybe she already knew most of these facts, as she is an artist herself! (I mean check out that kick ass book cover!)
I will never associate the color yellow with anything else except for this book as long as I live.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 stars -
I was so excited to read a book about cults. I love cults. Not that I want to be in one but the ideology of it is just so fascinating.
This book would have gotten a higher rating from me if there were less sexual stuff in it. Yes it somehow fits the story but some of it was just not necessary. Thank god (Thomas, hihi) that it was a woman who wrote it or else I would’ve dnf’d it.
Overall, interesting book with a very unique storyline. Wish we had gotten to know more about the inner working of this new god and how it all happened but I guess we can’t get everything we want. -
Book Review📚📚👻🎃
The Once Yellow House by Gemma Amor
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ( I HAVE TO FIND A PHYSICAL COPY IMMEDIATELY!!!)📖
( This would also be great for The Week of Weird Readathon also)
This book was so weird in a great way.
We follow Kate as she sets out to interview Hope about the events that led to such tragedy at her house. Hope, and Thomas owned a property called The Once Yellow House. It is believed that Tom was a cult leader of sorts. Eventually there was a mass catastrophe where a lot of people perished. Kate is now interviewing Hope about what happened.
If you like mixed media formats, books about cults, and books that are just simply strange and entertaining I highly suggest you pick this one up.
I realize this will not be for everyone, but I really think many of you will enjoy this so much. I love the way Gemma lays out the story, and you really see from the beginning how much Hope was affected by everything. You really feel for her. It got me the way she seemed to explain how love defies all obstacles, and the lengths you will go to, and the sacrifices you are willing to make.
This is available right now on Kindle Unlimited -
I just finished this wonderous book, and I'm still buzzing, so I'm not going to write a review right now. But let me tell you, this book is fucking fantastic. I love Gemma Amor. She's great.
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This is my second read by Gemma Amor, the first being last year's Full Immersion. I found the two books to be somewhat similar, namely in characters dealing with deep existential grief and trauma. However, while Full Immersion is quite long and gives much more time to explore those themes, it all feels quite rushed and under-baked in the 200ish pages of The Once Yellow House.
The Once Yellow House is an epistolary novel, primarily told through two means. One is the transcription of audio from a recording done by the second main character Kate as she finds and interviews the main character, Hope. Those are broken up by journal entries from Hope two years prior, but also serve as Hope's point of view that is then reacted to in the audio transcriptions. The setup of the format is that Kate is a survivor of the mass death event of a cult who wants to understand more about the cult from the wife of its leader, who is the only other known survivor. That's all set up in the first couple chapters so I wouldn't consider it a spoiler. Kate is sending her audio files to the editor of Cemetery Gates Media. A little meta but I liked that. There are a couple other random epistolary chapters thrown in, which are letters to the editor of the local newspaper complaining about or defending the cult.
My own bias here is that I'm not often excited about epistolary novels. I was able to get lost in Hope's journal chapters because they mostly read like traditional prose, and they took place during the actual events of the cult's quite fast formation and downfall. I didn't like that it seemed to skip so much about about what led to the cult's rise, and there was little insight into what the cult members were feeling and thinking, with the exception of Kate's dialogue in the audio transcriptions. This all made me feel little emotional connection to or empathy for any of those characters, so their downfall wasn't impactful in any way.
I think this would be an excellent story rewritten as traditional prose or if more points of view from characters within the cult were provided. The cult formed via social media groups, so posts from the groups would have really added to the story and fit with the modern epistolary style the author used. With that and some spelling/grammatical/editing issues throughout, I feel the end product was rushed. And yet, I'm glad I read it. I liked where the author was going with it. I liked that she didn't feel the need to explain the cosmic elements. The cosmic horror elements that were in this book were fantastic. The elements with mold were most terrifying to me and in those parts I felt the stress and paranoia of Hope and really enjoyed those. A film or audio-drama adaptation of this book could be fantastic with some small changes or additions to help support the narrative.
I give this book 3.5 moldy walls out of five, rounded up to 4 since I think there is a lot to enjoy here. For fans of cult, cosmic, and fungal horror and those who enjoy or are looking to try out modern epistolary narratives. -
3.5 stars, rounded down for the story being a touch too long.
This is.. I don't know. I'm not even sure I enjoyed reading this book, but when I considered dnf'ing it I knew I didn't want to do that.
This is the story of Kate, a former cult member. Thomas, also known as The Great God Thomas. And Hope, who was Thomas' wife. The story is transcripts of conversation between Hope and Kate, along with Hope's diary entries, as well as the occasional scrap of newspaper article of sketch. The story takes us through what happened that resulted in the deaths of over 300 of 'The Retinue', Thomas's cult.
It's an interesting premise and I like the kind of mixed media/found footage feel, but something just didn't vibe with me. While I wouldn't call this book "extreme horror", it does suffer from what turns me off from extreme horror and that is.. it feels kinda fetish-y? Like there are some weird sex moments and.. a lot of them for a 200 page story about the death of hundreds while also exploring themes of love and toxic marriage and cosmic horror. It was really distracting and felt like it was just there for shock value.
I honestly don't know what to make of this. I liked Dear Laura, also by the author, and it made me want to check out her other stuff. -
Kate was a member of a cult called the Retinue, and one of two survivors of the massacre that killed nearly four hundred people. She is determined to find Hope, the wife of the cult leader.
This is an epistolary horror story. The bulk of the story is excerpts and art from Hope's diary, and transcripts from an interview. A few other documents, mostly newspaper articles, are sprinkled in, which is the problem I have with this book. When I hear epistolary, I expect plenty of documents, papers, letters etc.
At the very least, I wanted police and autopsy reports, or better yet, transcriptions of calls to the dispatcher on the day of the massacre. It would have been a great way to ground the story in reality.
With that said, it was a solid four star read. It was compelling, and I couldn't stop reading. There were a lot of surprises, and the best ones were about Kate and Hope. All the weirdness, and chaos was very cool, but the two women, and their secrets, made the story.
There was also some pretty interesting things about cults, abuse, love and much more - so much packed into this short book. -
My first Gemma Amor and now I need all Amor's books! THE ONCE YELLOW HOUSE, told in epistolary style through mainly Hope's journal entries and transcripts from a recorded interview between her and Kate, tells a tale of madness. It chronicles how Hope's husband, Thomas, bought the house on the sly, and how everything devolved beyond anyone's control.
First off, the house was in piss poor condition to start, the exterior horrible, but the inside worse with its mold--yellow mold. Hope was sure it talked to them, manipulating them.
Then the accident in the house happened and Hope learns Thomas has been keeping something seemingly vastly insane--he's a God!-- from her. What's worse is he actually has followers. They wear yellow tunics and think they know better for Thomas than Hope.
If you like books about sinister cults, this is for you. This is highly original and thought-provoking. -
Mixed feelings on this - several distinct events going on in this novel rendered in epistolary fashion: 1) the disintegration of the relationship of the main character's (Hope Gloucester) marriage and possibly her mental state; 2) the cult that her husband creates; 3) the cosmic horror of her husband becoming... Something - that is worshipped by the cultists and the events that lead to what is called 'The Yellow Massacre' -- well, I guess there's a 4) as well - a survivor of the Massacre tracking Hope down and getting the whole story.
Well written - there's more than a nod to 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and 'The King In Yellow' as well as references to Art & Math and how they intertwine through the story that is pretty intriguing and is more than enough to recommend this to others.
But to me, the cosmic horror events seem to be 'gilding the lily'; again, that's just my personal reaction. -
One of the most gripping books I have read this year so far. The mix of diary extract and interview excerpts worked so well, I genuinely did not want to put it down and as someone with a low attention span, that was a rare but pleasant experience. In the end, I devoured it in a couple of days.
I won’t give away spoilers, but if you are a fan of Gemma’s then this is up there with her best work to date. If you haven’t read her work before, this fantastic piece of horror showcases an outstanding writing talent, with the ability to switch between the brooding atmosphere akin to a cosmic horror with some intense, often grotesque imagery. All wrapped up with her wonderful and unique art on the front and inside. -
So this is the first time I read a book in Epistolary format, if you don’t know what that is it’s basically a story written in the form of letters and other written documentation. This is also my first read by this author as well. Unfortunately however it just fell flat in the end for me.
At first I was very excited because the plot seemed very interesting and intrigued me. But I started to lose interest more and more by the time I realized what the mystery is. One I understood exactly what happened at the once yellow house and started to put the pieces together, overall the story just felt lackluster in the end.
The writing is good and overall is well put together but I just felt like I was going over evidence as opposed to having a casual read. -
4.5 stars.
I don't know what I was expecting from this; it was certainly more existential and philosphical then the stuff I normally read, but it was GORGEOUS. Really beautifully written, really really really gross, and super creepy. Ultimately it was one of those stories where I was left wanting more! I admired it's exploration of domestic abuse and cults, it was very thought-provoking. This is the second Gemma Amor book I've read and I'm sure it won't be the last. -
Some interesting themes explored here, wrapped up in some great psychological and body horror, told by two unreliable narrators through diary entries and audio transcripts.
However parts of it gets lost in areas by the lecture-y nature it sometimes takes when talking about art. The footnotes would contribute to breaking the story by giving massive info dumps and not really contributing anything extra to the story.
I enjoyed the ride here, the execution just left a lot to be desired for me -
I didn’t know what to expect going into this, but it was executed brilliantly. I’ve only read one other title by Gemma Amor which I also gave a high rating. Going to fly through all her work this year! Highly recommend this. Written beautifully, so different in its prose, and she managed to portray every theme perfectly without being overbearing
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This book takes off from the first page. It's done from the standpoint of a journal and audio interview notes, which gives it a creepy found footage vibe.
It's a cult with a cosmic horror feel.
I loved it. -
Another masterpiece by one of the best horror writers out there today.
Pick this book up if you like…
-Cosmic Horror
-Cults
-Found Footage
-believable and realistic characters
-body horror
I highly recommend this book -
This blew me away. A totally different story than her past works - a tale told in the form of diaries and a recorded interview about the rise of a modern day God, a cult and its ultimate end.
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Review to come!
