The House Saphir
By: Marissa Meyer
Narrated by: Rebecca Soler
Publication: November 4, 2025 by Macmillan Young Listeners
Duration: 12 Hours, 15 Minutes, 3 Seconds
432 pages
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Retelling
Source: Publisher via NetGalley (Thank you!!)
( Goodreads | Amazon )
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Goodreads description--From the #1 New York Times bestselling "Queen of Fairytale Retellings" and author of Cinder and Heartless, this is the tale of Bluebeard as it's never been told before—a thrilling romantasy and 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 learning to trust her heart. Especially when the person her heart wants the most might be a murderer himself.
I have an up-and-down relationship with Marissa Meyer's books. I loved the Lunar Chronicle series. And I enjoyed the first book in the Gilded series. I never finished book 2. I wasn't sure about The House Saphir, but I decided to take a chance and check it out. And I am glad that I got the audiobook version so I could do that.
The House Saphir is about a girl who is pretending to be a witch in order to trick people into paying for haunted house tours, seances, trinkets, potions, and various other things. She and her sister are simply trying to survive by whatever means necessary. Specifically, she is using a local mansion in disrepair where the owner is known to have killed his four wives before he himself died.
Mallory is approached on one such tour by the descendant of Count Bastian Saphir who wants to use her services to expell the ghost of the count from the house. Mallory and her sister move into the house hoping to milk the experience for all the time and money they can. Only Mallory begins to develop feelings for Armand, the man who hired her. And things aren't quite as they seem all around.
I am so thankful that I listened to this book on audio. I have nearly zero experience with French. And many, many words would have been horribly butchered or skipped entirely had I been reading this book myself and not listening to it. The narrator did a wonderful job.
I can't say that anything about the story itself, plot wise, was a surprise. Things played out pretty expectedly. The creatures and the magic were fairly unique at least to my knowledge. Again, I'm not up on any French folklore if these beasts were inspired by anything or completely fictional created by Marissa Meyer.
There was enough of a romance to satisfy me. I don't usually enjoy reading if that's entirely missing. I don't remember much cursing. And there are no spicy scenes to worry about.
The House Saphir was better than I was expecting. Yet I wasn't expecting a lot given that I was on the fence about this book. I've liked Marissa Meyer in the past, but the description didn't seem entirely something that I would normally gravitate towards. Unless you're familiar with French, I do suggest listening to the audiobook. The House Saphir gets 3 Stars. Have you read or listened to The House Saphir? What did you think? Let me know!
