Sarah has difficulty making friends at her new school, though connects with Nick Dunnigan, a young boy recently released from a mental facility.

Kirkus Reviews said, "Anyone who's survived adolescence will take a certain pleasure in watching Saul turn all the normal fears, competitions and terrors of teenagers into supernaturally tinged Grand Guignol.

The storytelling is strenuously unnuanced but undeniably powerful as it brings to vivid life an adolescent's zero-sum view of moral realities.

"[2] Bookreporter's Ray Palen said, "Although House of Reckoning wraps itself up a little too quickly, the journey to the conflicted climax is worth the trip.

Saul is at his best when he gets inside the heart and mind of his teenaged characters, and the team of Sarah Crane and Nick Dunnigan firmly represents teen angst at its darkest and most dangerous.