Khyati's Post

Rooted in Indian folklore, steeped in grief, and written in prose that is both lyrical and unsettling, Heena Rathore’s The Manor is a book that lingers long after the last page. The story follows Leela Jamwal, who returns with her teenage brother Purab to their ancestral home on the monsoon-soaked Konkan coast after losing their parents and grandmother. But grief, as Heena reminds us, is rarely a passive thing. It unsettles, it reorients—“like a compass in a magnetic storm.” Within the crumbling walls of the manor, Leela begins to sense strange presences: mirrors that shift, walls that hum, whispers soft as breath. Are these supernatural manifestations, or the hallucinations of a grief-stricken mind? That haunting ambiguity is part of what makes the novella so gripping. What elevates The Manor beyond a standard haunted house story is its layering of themes. The supernatural is interwoven with survivor’s guilt, generational trauma, and female oppression. The Widow—a chilling ancestral force tied to Leela’s bloodline—demands silence, obedience, and sacrifice. Through her, the novella echoes the patriarchal voice that has long dictated women’s roles: “We follow the rules. We obey. We stay quiet.” Leela, however, is anything but quiet. The house itself becomes a living, breathing entity. Its oppressive corridors, shifting doors, and eerie relics (a bone cradle, marigolds, veiled figures) intensify the claustrophobia. The atmosphere is so vividly conjured that you can almost smell the dampness of monsoon-soaked walls and hear the creak of the old floors. Heena’s writing is exquisite—haunting yet poetic. Consider lines like: “Morning didn’t arrive so much as it seeped in, slow, reluctant, dragging with the residue of night… pale and sour, like curdled milk, failing to chase the shadows from the corners.” The ending is cleverly constructed, leaving you both unsettled and satisfied. It’s the kind of horror that creeps under your skin, not through jump scares but through an ever-tightening sense of inevitability.

• Hidden 14
• 30.4K Followers
• 1.3K Posts
• 135 Average Likes
• 0.52% Eng. Rate

This post was published on 20th September, 2025 by Khyati on her Instagram handle "@bookish.fame (Khyati | Book Blogger)". Khyati has total 30.4K followers on Instagram and has a total of 1.3K post. Khyati receives an average engagement rate of 0.52% per post on Instagram. This post has received 14 comments which are lower than the average comments that Khyati gets. Overall the engagement rate for this post was lower than the average for the profile.