I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. While this book is a bit of a tangled mess of melodrama, that was part of its charm. Shamelessly gothic enough to remind me of my childhood love of Dark Shadows, with a huge homage to Greco-Roman and Shakespearean tragedies. The narrative device of having a fledgling filmmaker who wants to do a documentary on the neighbors really worked well. It helped to tie the numerous flashbacks and side plots together through the narrator's discovery process.

The Golden House is a word nerd's treasure trove. When the narrative trickery isn't quite enough to make sense of all of the random craziness, I still found myself reveling in the beauty of the sentences. There is plenty of satire to go around, landing particularly hard on New York real estate magnates, mob bosses, and politicians. It takes a bit of plodding to find all the hidden gems, and it's worth the effort.