★ Kirkus starred review :
"Though there’s something of an inside joke happening on every page, Mitchell serves up a story that wouldn’t be out of place alongside The Turn of the Screw. Ingenious, scary, and downright weird."
Publishers Weekly was less kind in its review, although it did name Slade House as a Literary Fiction Top 10 Pick for Fall 2015:
"The high degree of self-reference—and the skipping through genre and time—is trademark Mitchell, but the constant rehashing of what is already a pretty thin plot means that this offering fails to really stand up on its own, or to add anything new to the Mitchell-verse."
Booklist:
“Superb . . . Mitchell offers his most accessible book yet—a haunted-house story in the vein of such classics as The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House. . . . Suggest to fans of Audrey Niffenegger, Karen Russell, and Steven Millhauser, and expect it to be read as a Halloween staple for years to come.”
According to an article at The Guardian, "Slade House began as the 280-tweet story The Right Sort, which was set in the same universe as The Bone Clocks and which Mitchell released tweet by tweet last July, describing the medium at the time as a 'diabolical treble-strapped textual straitjacket'. But the 2,000-word story 'quickly acquired a life of its own...'"
I know that you can order a signed copy of the book from Rainy Day Books in Kansas City without having to pay for or go to the event. I'm sure the other cities' bookstores are similar.
Rainy Day Books also has a number of 'autographed books' for sale on their Website.