Kate’s Review: “The Haunting of Room 904”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “The Haunting of Room 904” by Erika T. Wurth

Publishing Info: Flatiron Books, March 2025

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: From the author of White Horse (“Twisty and electric.” —The New York Times Book Review) comes a terrifying and resonant novel about a woman who uses her unique gift to learn the truth about her sister’s death.

Olivia Becente was never supposed to have the gift. The ability to commune with the dead was the specialty of her sister, Naiche. But when Naiche dies unexpectedly and under strange circumstances, somehow Olivia suddenly can’t stop seeing and hearing from spirits.

A few years later, she’s the most in-demand paranormal investigator in Denver. She’s good at her job, but the loss of Naiche haunts her. That’s when she hears from the Brown Palace, a landmark Denver hotel. The owner can’t explain it, but every few years, a girl is found dead in room 904, no matter what room she checked into the night before. As Olivia tries to understand these disturbing deaths, the past and the present collide as Olivia’s investigation forces her to confront a mysterious and possibly dangerous cult, a vindictive journalist, betrayal by her friends, and shocking revelations about her sister’s secret life.

The Haunting of Room 904 is a paranormal thriller that is as edgy as it is heartfelt and simmers with intensity and longing. Erika T. Wurth lives up to her reputation as “a gritty new punkish outsider voice in American horror.”

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

It is always a double edged sword when it is time for me to approach a book that I have been very much looking forward to. I always try to temper my expectations, because in my own mind something I am SO excited about can get so hyped up. This was always in the back of my mind when I was getting ready to read “The Haunting of Room 904” by Erika T. Wurth. There were so many things I was excited about with this title. It’s a haunting story, and I LOVE a haunting story. It has a medium, and a somewhat reluctant one at that. And it’s Wurth’s newest horror novel, and after how much I loved “White Horse” this one was really, really anticipated. So combining all of these things had be buzzing with excitement and nervousness. The verdict? The nervousness was a LITTLE warranted…

Starting with the positives, I do have a good amount to say. For one, Wurth always knows how to tease out a creepy image onto the page, and for me, there are so many things you can do with ghosts in regards to creepy imagery. There were so many moments here that really unnerved me, be it sobbing ghosts being described in mirrors to uncanny movements of other supernatural beings that Olivia encounters, we have a lot of really great material that really stood out in my mind’s eye, horror wise. I also enjoyed the way that Wurth described and built up the aspect of Olivia’s paranormal investigations, and how we got to see a few of her clients and cases in action. I’ve been a huge fan of the concept of ghost hunting ever since I first saw “Ghostbusters” as a little girl, and I liked the lore and process that Wurth brought through in this story in regards to some of the cases. But the part of this book that stood out to me the most was how Wurth ties the concepts of trauma, generational or otherwise, to the story at hand, not only through Olivia’s family and the loss of her sister, but also through the exploration and connection to the Sand Creek Massacre, one of many horrendous acts of violence against Indigenous People by the United States Government. The chapters that follow the Massacre are devastating and the way that it intersects with the story at hand made it all the more emotionally powerful for me. I also really enjoyed Olivia as a character, with her snark and her scrappiness but also her vulnerability. She’s very easy to root for.

However, I did think that some of the pacing felt a little bit off, and that there was sometimes a bit TOO much stuffed into the story. We had some awkward transitions sometimes, and while parts of the story felt a bit slow, others felt rushed. In terms of overstuffing the story, I liked how we got to see different cultural themes brought into the book, but sometimes it felt like it was going a bit off track from the story that was laid out. For example, there was a piece of the puzzle involving a Golem and a Dybbuk Box and that didn’t feel like it was explored enough to have a solid reason to have it there (especially since the entire concept of a Dybbuk Box is based on a hoax and has perpetuated Jewish stereotypes and exploited Jewish folklore for modern sensationalistic ghost hunting motives; to be fair, though, Wurth does mention the original Dybbuk Box as a hoax). Especially when there were probably other ways that these puzzle pieces could have fit together that didn’t feel like we were getting off into the weeds.

So while this didn’t quite live up to my expectations, I still found “The Haunting of Room 904” to be an unsettling and very emotional ghost story, be the ghosts actual ghosts or the ghosts that still haunt American history.

Rating 7: Though it was a bit muddled at times, overall I found “The Haunting of Room 904” to be creepy, emotional, and a calling out of the way that atrocities of colonialism still haunt Native populations in America.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Haunting of Room 904” is included on the Goodreads lists “Indigenous Books 2025”, and “Horror to Look Forward to in 2025”.