Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury: Summary and Study Guide
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Quick Facts
| | | |---|---| | Author | Liselle Sambury | | Publication Year | 2023 | | Genre | Young adult supernatural psychological thriller with haunted-house horror elements | | Setting | A secluded lakeside mansion near Timmins, northern Ontario, with earlier scenes in Toronto | | Narrator | Dual perspective: first-person narration in Daisy's past timeline and third-person limited narration in Brittney's present timeline |
Short Summary
Daisy Odlin can see the dead. When her mother Grace inherits a secluded lakeside mansion near Timmins, Ontario, from her abusive ex-uncle Peter Belanger, the two move north to escape their past. But the mansion—known as the Miracle Mansion—is a living, predatory entity that traps ghosts, feeds on the living, and erases memories. Daisy befriends King, a psychic boy who warns her about the house, and Ivy, a ghost girl who possesses Daisy at night, demanding to know the identity of a girl who died in the mansion. Ten years later, media intern Brittney investigates the mansion for a documentary series, uncovering the truth about Grace, Daisy, and Ivy. The novel weaves together Daisy's past and Brittney's present to expose intergenerational trauma, conditional maternal love, and the cost of being believed.
Full Summary
Daisy's Past Timeline
Daisy Odlin is a teenager living in a basement apartment in Toronto's Leslieville neighborhood with her mother, Grace. Daisy can see the dead—translucent spirits drawn to suffering—and keeps Kidz Bop playing to keep them away. She has been dating Noah, a university student, but after getting drunk at his party and having her age exposed, he goes silent and begins dating Stephanie, a blond girl Daisy has researched online. Daisy shaves her hair with her mother's wig clippers, beginning a transformation of identity.
Grace receives word that Uncle Peter—her former brother-in-law—has died and left them a lakeside mansion near Timmins, Ontario. The will requires them to make it their permanent residence, or it passes to Aunt Dione and then the government. Facing financial precarity, Daisy and Grace pack up and move north. During the drive, Grace reveals she spent summers at the property from age ten to sixteen.
They arrive by boat at night and stay in a bunkie while the main house is prepared as an Airbnb. Daisy meets King, a psychic boy from the Okeke family, who warns her that the house is dangerous and offers his family's cleansing services. She also meets Ivy, a girl who seems to know the property and gives Daisy her orange hat for safety. Daisy discovers a maggot emerging from a scab on her scalp, and the house begins to exert its influence.
Daisy and Ivy enter the mansion together, finding it lavishly furnished and crowded with ghosts. Daisy finds more maggots in her scalp. Butcherbirds—shrikes that impale prey on thorns—attack her in the bush, and her mother rescues her. A goat delivered to the property is found dead with its throat cut. Guests at the Airbnb experience terrifying encounters but forget them afterward, the house erasing their memories after taking something from them.
The house itself is a sentient, predatory entity. It traps ghosts within its walls, feeds on the living, and erases the memories of those who give something up to escape. King explains that the house blocks psychic abilities and that his family's clairvoyant