The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years

 The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan, 320 pages.

After her mother dies, Sana and her father move to Akbar Manzil, a once grand house on the coast of South Africa that has slowly deteriorated into apartments for people who are fading away. The house wants to keep it's own sad secrets, and it's happy to keep the stories of it's residents as well. But Sana is not content to let the past lie, and her poking into the past of the first residents finally begins to loosen the stagnation that has gripped the house for nearly a century, just as poking into the lives of her new neighbors shakes them from their own stagnation. 

This is a beautiful book, but it is very difficult to describe. The lyrical, thoughtful prose reminds me quite a bit of The Starless Sea (a personal favorite of mine), while the plot reminds me a bit of the 80's movie *batteries not included. It's a coming-of-age plot wrapped up in a story that's a little too gentle to be a haunted house story and a little too ominous not to be. The fantasy elements were much less prominent than I expected from the description, putting this more in the realm of magical realism than true fantasy. Ultimately it's a book centered on the concepts of community and family, both where they are strong and where they fail. I would recommend it wholeheartedly, and I'm excited to see what else this author has to offer. 

(Kara beat me to writing about this book here last week, but I wrote out the whole summary anyway because I had a lot to say)