Book Review: HOUSE

Title: House

Author: Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Pages: 362

My GoodReads Rating: 

Jack and Stephanie Singleton, he a published author, she a country singer, are a married couple who are drifting apart. They are heading to a counselling session when a patrolman causes them to lose their way. Later, the cop, Morton Lawdale, gives them directions to where they want to go, but they still end up in the back of beyond where a rubber mat with steel spikes in the middle of the road messes with their tyres, leading them to seek shelter at the Wayside Inn.

There they meet hotelier Randy Messarue and his partner, psychologist Leslie Taylor, who have met with a similar accident and have sought shelter at the Inn. Later, the four meet the house owners, Stewart and Betty and their son, Pete. From the beginning, it is apparent that there is something off about these houseowners.  

At this point, a man wearing a tin mask, the Tin Man, crashes a car into the front porch, then throws a tin can into the house. The can contains a sheet of paper with three rules. 1) God came to my house and I killed him. 2) I will kill anyone who comes to my house as I killed God. 3) Give me one dead body, and I might let rule two slide. Game over at dawn.

Before long, the houseowners and then the guests are trying to serve up one dead body, in the hope that they will be able to leave. Then they meet a young girl called Susan who has been hiding out in the House. The Tin Man wants the guests to kill her in exchange for freedom. What they don’t know is that the House has an appetite, and they might never leave.

 

 

WHAT I LIKED:
The patrolman rolled his head to crack his neck was such a potent image of menace and aggression.

 

The tension shows up pretty early in the story. The tension between Jack and Stephanie was so intense that by the time they reached the inn, it was clear that this was a horror story with the tropes of haunted house and crazy killing ahead. This tension was also evident when the seven sat down to the evening meal. The meal itself is a classic horror trope, rotting meat with maggots crawling in it.

 

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

I didn’t like this sentence: Hated the terror that had him squealing like a schoolgirl in his own mind. Isn’t fear a raw human emotion that affects both genders equally? Why couldn’t this sentence be rephrased so the misogyny was removed?

I found Stephanie very selfish and self-centred. The others showed better character under duress, at least initially. Why she began to hate Leslie almost at sight sounded very petty and trivial.

 

The narrative induced neither fear nor chills. The house is alive, and keeps changing the layout constantly, and bad things begin to happen. The house serves up double and later, multiple, versions of the characters. And there’s no way for us to figure out whether what’s happening is real or an illusion. The premise sounded good, but it made for exhaustive reading and became tiresome. There were no dips and crests, just lows and more lows. Nothing to help us catch our breath.

 

At one point, the narrator tells us that Betty looked at Jean, several paragraphs before Betty has even introduced herself to the newcomers in her house.

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:

Technically, the Tin Man’s three rules are only 1 feeble rule, Rule 3. The first is a confession, the second a stated intention.

 

For a horror story to win, the reader needs to care for the characters and what happens to them. I didn’t feel invested in any of the characters, not even in Jack, who had the most agency and whose limited PoV the story was written in.  

 

It would have helped if the authors had revealed something, but as late as the 78pc mark, we have no clue why these four are in the soup they are in.

 

The allusions and references are Christian, but their impact is nullified as they weren’t clear in the context of plot events. Unlike say, Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant or CS Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. How and why Susan is revealed to be what she is revealed to be makes no sense. The advice she offered was utterly vague. After 400 pages, I came away feeling relieved the book was over.

 

As a concept, it may have sounded fine at the idea stage but reading it doesn’t give us a sense of having encountered some dark night of the soul. Susan’s words don’t resonate with us. And after all of that, her identity was never properly clarified.

ALL SAID AND DONE:

This was my first book by either of the two authors. Given their reputation, I expected something better than this.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

Book Review: THE KNOCKING

Title: The Knocking

Author: Laura Lee Bahr

Publisher: Little A

Pages: 288

My GoodReads Rating: 

EA (Edith Ann) Howe, a budding newspaperwoman, travels to the home of Horace Greeley of the New York Daily Tribune to show him the editorial she has written on the Congressional Compromise. She finds Greeley’s house a massive and dark mansion, with a reputation for being haunted. Mr and Mrs Greeley have buried four children. Only three-yo Charlotte is still alive.

At the mansion, EA meets Mary Greeley, who seems deranged, Cathie Fox, an 11-yo ward of Mr Greeley, and Jessica Elliott, Cathie’s beautiful English governess. Cathie is a medium and can channel and talk to spirits. Mrs Greeley uses Cathie’s services to connect with her dead children, especially Arthur, the child she loved the most.

All EA wants to do is to get Greeley to print the editorial she has written in favour of the liberty of the former slaves and against the Congressional Compromise which revokes the freedom of the emancipated slaves. But her views are too radical for Mr Greeley. He gives her a test to prove her worth; she must write an article on Cathie’s abilities. In fulfilling her new assignment, she gets caught up in the middle of danger.

 

The story is written in the first-person present tense of EA.

 

WHAT I LIKED:

I liked the character of EA, her passion and pluck. Her backstory gives her the demons and vulnerability that come out to haunt her in a home that is supposedly haunted. Her heart is in the right place, and she cares for issues related to women and former slaves. She is sensitive to the pain of others and aspires to be America’s third newspaperwoman. Her experience with publication tells us how hard it is for women to get ahead in male professions.

 

There’s a thread of humour that is woven through her self-deprecation and even her interaction with Jane Swisshelm, her mentor, and Mr Greeley.

 

I especially liked the line in her editorial where she questions what kind of world is it when one cannot discuss what is moral, what is good and evil… To compromise with evil is to be complicit in it. She believes that the world is leaning towards authoritarianism, and that there is too much power in too few hands. I liked this about EA, that she has convictions and is willing to speak up for them.

After Greely insults her for having morals and ethics like a schoolgirl, she thinks, May the schoolgirls take over this earth if they are the only ones who will speak the plain truth.

 

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

When EA comes to know about Jessica’s intentions, she does nothing about it. For someone who has ranted on about justice, she refrains from taking the smallest step towards the cause. When it really mattered, it appeared that her quest for justice wasn’t real. Her unwillingness to pursue justice made her weak, physically and morally, after establishing her as a strong character for the greater part of the book.

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:

There was much scope to make the story about EA and her own relationship with her mother. Instead, she is one good protagonist around whom the story happens, mostly to other characters. The plot events concern Cathie, Mary Greeley and Jessica Elliot, Cathie’s governess.

We don’t hear enough about the mother who tried to kill her and killed her older brother. That would have made a far more interesting story than that of Cathie and Jessica.

 

ALL SAID AND DONE:

I didn’t like the way this story turned out. Even the aura of the haunted house failed to materialize. It was a dank, dark place, but the menace of the haunted house wasn’t evident.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

Book Review: PORCELAIN (SHADOWS OF HYSTERIA)

Title: Porcelain (Shadows of Hysteria)

Author: Jesse Sprague

Publisher: Cursed Dragon Ship Publishing

Pages: 344

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

 

 

Gabrielle Cross is under therapy and medication to help her cope with the aftermath of a tragedy in the past. She has also previously been institutionalized. Ten years ago, when she was only nine, her parents were found brutally murdered, and she was found covered in their blood. She believed then that it was her porcelain doll, a family antique, that had killed them in order to protect her.

Now Gabrielle is trying to live a normal life, go to college, date. How long will it be before her past catches up with her?

When her date, Joe, takes her home on the very first date and pressures her for sex, she blacks out. When she wakes up, he is dead with stab wounds and noticeable strangulation marks, causing Gabrielle’s past to be brought to the fore again. She is filled with doubts and fears and the only two people who trust her are her half-brother, Michael, and her friend, Peter.

Meanwhile, Michael has begun a relationship with Cole Montez, a bisexual, divorced cop who is going through a bitter legal battle with ex-wife Joan for the custody of their 4-year-old daughter, Isa, while the banks threaten to foreclose on his house.

Then Cole is assigned the case. Will he be able to ensure justice for everyone?

 

As a child, Gabrielle believed that her doll had committed the murders. Now she is anxious to find answers. Is she really a murderer or could the doll be possessed by an evil spirit?

 

The book shines a spotlight on mental illness and schizophrenia. Peter is schizophrenic but has sought help and is doing well. Issues of mental health are written about in this book from a place of sensitivity and understanding.

 

The story is written in the 3^rd person past tense PoV of Gabrielle and Cole. For the greater part of the novel, the story shifted between the two PoVs in regularly alternating chapters. At the 38^th chapter, we get six consecutive chapters in Gabrielle’s PoV, causing the pace to flag a little bit.

 

The 3^rd person PoV of Gabrielle, with which the story began, drew me into the story. Unfortunately, the second chapter, where we get to know Gabrielle’s half-brother, Michael, through the eyes of his boyfriend, Cole, was completely unnecessary. This chapter appeared to have been put in just to bring us up to speed on the past. Michael tells his new boyfriend (and us) the story of their lives. This chapter nearly put me off reading the rest of the book.

 

Also Cole’s utter infatuation with Michael was something I found annoying. I almost gave up reading because of this thread in the story. Cole kept thinking that Michael was gorgeous which took away from the main story. Thankfully, the pace improved after the second chapter, and Cole kept his infatuation under wraps.

 

I found the two men, Michael and Cole, very boring and annoying. Lucinda ‘Cinder’, Gabrielle’s roommate and friend, was a minor character I liked straightaway for her loyalty and sense of friendship.

 

The author has a good style. The characterization, description, conflict and action are handled well. The description of Peter and Gabrielle standing atop the unfinished building had me feeling queasy. But the horror and supernatural elements were weak.

 

The book needed to be proofed better. Modicum is a noun, not an adverb as is used here.

 

After a few chapters, Gabrielle didn’t stay in ‘character’. She stopped mentioning her meds or repeating her affirmations.

 

Cole’s bisexuality was token, having no bearing on the main plot. Why didn’t the author just make him gay? The romance between Cole and Michael took up too much space.

 

Also, the doll could have been a lot more menacing. Once the investigation started, we didn’t see any evidence of the horror of the doll for ourselves. It was all in Gabrielle’s flashbacks. The doll on the cover of the book was quite creepy but we don’t get to see her inherently evil nature.

 

The doll’s relationship with Gabrielle is downplayed. Instead we get to see more of Cole and Michael, Cole and Joan, Gabrielle and Cinder, and Cole and Isa. Even Yolanda, Cole’s nanny, the most minor of the characters, gets more space here.

 

The dialogue and Gabrielle’s internal monologue get repetitive, with Gabrielle repeatedly wishing herself dead, and wondering if the doll is a part of her or external to her.

 

Despite the accusation of murder that hangs over her, Gabrielle isn’t put under surveillance. Additionally, Gabrielle’s extended conversation with Peter wasn’t as revelatory as she seemed to think it would be.

 

Isa is supposed to be 4, but I couldn’t sense her innocence. She appeared too grown up.

 

The resolution was weak. By the 82 percent mark, I had stopped caring about any of the characters. There were a number of questions that remained unanswered. Why was Joe killed a day after the horrible date? How did his death come about?

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: THE KEEPER OF THE KEY

Title: The Keeper of the Key

Author: Nicole Willson

Publisher: Parliament House Press

Pages: 286

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

 

Heed the Dead or Join Them, said the warning on the cover, and I braced myself for a good read.

When 16-year-old Rachel Morley’s mother, Tara, decides to accept boyfriend Geoff’s invitation to move into his mansion, Morgan House, in St Mary’s, Rachel feels uprooted. When they get to Morgan House, Rachel gets the creeps. She can’t help feeling that someone is watching her. Soon strange things begin to happen.  She feels a strange presence in the house and hears odd noises.

Her mother, eager to build a future with Geoff, hopes Rachel will settle. But that won’t be easy as Geoff has lots of rules, the strangest of which is that Rachel is never to go into the basement.

Luckily what makes her new town bearable is the presence of Nick Alexander, a good-looking guy who takes Rachel to the cemetery on their first date. Suddenly, the town of St Mary doesn’t feel so unbearable. The only trouble is that Morgan House seems more dangerous than ever. Each night she has horrible dreams about something evil in the basement, and a strangely familiar man whose face she can’t see, then wakes up to find herself in the basement, even though she doesn’t remember having gone there.

The book is written in the 1^st person present tense PoV of Rachel. The author creates a sense of dread. The eerie atmosphere weighs us down. The writing evokes the right imagery. The pace is good. Even though I guessed the source of the mystery, I still continued reading.

 

Geoff is a pain from the beginning, at least to Rachel. But he comes across as one-dimensional. Initially, there is nothing to redeem him in Rachel’s eyes.

The mother’s character could have been a little stronger. She doesn’t seem to have any agency of her own. She tells Rachel to give Morgan House a shot, and that if she doesn’t like it, they will leave. But then when Rachel expresses her misgivings, she still won’t move.

Another time, she tells Rachel that if she is not happy with Geoff’s proposal, she will decline. But then, she accepts the proposal. In both instances, Rachel settles down and makes peace with her decision. Which is a letdown, given her fierce desire to leave.

They don’t decide to leave until the very end. They should have at least made an attempt to leave.

Overall, I felt that there should have been more scenes with Rachel and her mother together, without Geoff around. We don’t get to see the mother-daughter dynamic enough. Also, Rachel mentions her father initially, but then halfway through the book, she comes to know something about her dad that she hadn’t known and that detail seemed forced. Having come to know of that fact, Rachel stops stressing over it, and doesn’t mention it again. This is strange, given that relationships play a huge part in this book.  

There were some things that weren’t clear.

Why was Rachel targeted? Just because she lived in the house?

What was the deal about the key in the title? Why does that key show up so late?

Rachel talks about another kind of ghost, when friendships fizzle out. I found this very sad. She knows that best friend, Elena, will soon forget her. On the other hand, Rachel herself forgets about Elena, once she meets Nick. 

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: THE VILLA AND THE VORTEX

Title: The Villa and the Vortex: Selected Supernatural Stories, 1914–1924

Author: Elinor Mordaunt

Editor: Melissa Edmundson

Publisher: Handheld Classics

Pages: 306

My GoodReads Rating: 

 

The Villa and the Vortex: Supernatural stories, 1916‒1924, by Elinor Mordaunt was a treat. I suspect that the editor selected these two stories for the title of this collection because of the alliteration, which works well. My favourite in this collection was Hodge. 

The short stories have been selected and put together by Melissa Edmundson, who also gives us a detailed introduction to Elinor’s life and her writing. A glossary by Kate Macdonald, at the end of the book, brings us up to speed on the archaic words used in the stories.

The stories in this collection were as follows:

The Weakening Point (1916): Bond, the scion of the high-born and privileged Challice family, is plagued by nightmares on the night of his birthday, since his very first birthday. A fine boy, he grows up to be a handsome man with nothing to mar the happiness of his life other than these dreams.

The Country-Side (1917): The Reverend Robert Wister and his wife Margaret have been married for five years in a poor and overcrowded South London parish. Life is hard but there is a sense of purpose and they are happy, in their marriage and in their vocation. When Robert is offered the living of a parish in the countryside, their life changes. Robert adapts quickly to the life of leisure, hunting and drinking, slowly drifting apart from his wife who is shunned by the villagers. But when she receives the greatest betrayal, there must be the ultimate sacrifice. The poor Margaret is blamed for her behaviour, but is she more sinned against than sinning?

One quote from this story stood out for me for its truth. The root of all religions lies about what we – in connection with our own beliefs – call ‘faith’ and – in connection with other people’s beliefs – ‘delusions’.

Another quote says: Your true rustic is suckled on spells, incarnations and superstitions.

Both these stories are about the hold exerted by the primitive over the modern. I wasn’t so impressed with the first story, but the second one sparked my interest, and the following story, The Vortex, held it, never letting go.

The Vortex (1919): Lawrence Kerstervon escapes a dismal home life at age 18 to become a playwright who is attracted to the tragic and the morbid. His play is backed by a famous actor, and rehearsals begin. Slowly the actors get into their characters, getting a little too far into the skin of their characters. Soon we realise that the story has them a little too tight in its vortex.

Hodge (1921): Rector Fane’s children, Rhoda and her younger brother, Hector, having lost their mother, are best friends. The two children spent hours in innocent play, conjuring up the ancient, natural world through their imagination. One day, they find, close to the sea near their home, a charmed forest in which they find the remains of what might be a creature older than Homo Erectus, but younger than Neanderthal Man. The creature is alive. The trouble begins when the creature, who the children name Hodge, is smitten with Rhoda.

 

The Fountain (1921): A woman named Sylvia Colquhoun, too pure for this world, is married to a man with base and voracious appetites. His failure to understand her pains her, and when she learns that he has betrayed their marriage vows, it breaks her heart, and she drowns in the pool of the fountain that Harry had built for her in the early days of their marriage. After her funeral, the household discovers that the pool and the seven springs that fed it have all run dry, but the house has taken on a damp, dank air.

‘Luz’ (1922): A young nurse finds herself at the mercy of a stranger who offers to guide her home on a foggy London night. By and by, she discovers that her guide is blind and that he is leading her far away from home. She will soon learn just how evil his intentions are.

The Landlady (1923): A young, married couple, having rented the genteel and beautiful home of a Miss Julia Champneys, begin to see the disembodied spirit of their landlady around their house. They guess rightly that she is not dead but alive and unable to part with her home. 

Four Wallpapers (1924): Eva Erskine and her husband, Tom, have inherited a beautiful house which needs a lot of repair work to be rendered habitable. Then Eva notices four layers of peeling wallpaper and sees the ghosts of the former inhabitants of the house in four previous decades, and gets a glimpse into their tragic lives. 

The Villa (1924): is a vengeful house that unleashes death upon those who live beneath its roof after its rightful owner meets with her death by foul means. 

Each story plays upon the supernatural theme in vastly different ways. No two stories are set in the same circumstances. Yet in their different worlds, they conjure up the inexplicable and the supernatural for us. Elinor is a very talented writer. Each story is a beautiful piece of writing. 

(I read this book on Edelweiss. Thank you to the author, the publisher and Edelweiss.) 

 

Book Review: THE NIGHT JANITOR

Title: The Night Janitor

Author: TF Allen
Publisher: Self-published
Pages: 306

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I don’t know what genre to categorise this book into. It was a thriller certainly, but its supernatural elements were at the core of this story.

Luke Johnson works as a night janitor at a hospital. It is not his real name. The job allows him access to patients, allows him to heal. His only aim is to heal people of their illness, heal the world of the evil that his sister stands for.

Luke has amazing powers of healing, while his sister, Annamaria Gabor is a sociopath, a cold-blooded killer. Annamaria, her name now changed to Anna Varner, is now running for the post of Vice-President of the United States, after the unexpected death of her husband, who was earlier supposed to be a running mate to Senator Blair. Annamaria knows it is only a matter of time before the Senator is no longer a hurdle in her path and the Presidency is hers. She will do whatever it takes to reach the top.

For Annamaria has a power. She can kill by touching her victim and whispering the name of the disease she wants them to be struck with. She now wants to hurt Nick, the fake psychic conman who is actually the father who abandoned her and Luke when she was only 13 years old.

Luke must hide his abilities from people, and most of all keep moving as he desperately seeks to avoid getting hunted down by Annamaria’s goons. 

After years of running, Marisa Cruz, a nurse at the Houston hospital he works for, breaks through his defences, promising to keep him under the radar so he can continue to heal. Luke knows that it’s not a promise she can keep. Annamaria will not rest until Luke is dead.

Eventually, Annamaria decides to take matters in her own hands. Sometimes you needed to drive into the mud and wrestle with the pigs yourself.

Meanwhile, Clyde Merritt, a YouTube sensation on the lookout for a story that will make him viral, becomes aware of the Gabor siblings. It is the most unusual story of his career, and it helps him earn more money than he has ever known. But it also draws the attention of Annamaria, exposing him to real danger. When she sends goons after him, he becomes part of the story he is chasing.

Unknown to Annamaria and Clyde, there is yet another person whose existence threatens the most powerful woman in America. Will Annamaria kill Luke and Marisa, or will they be able to defend themselves?

The book grabs our attention with the very first line: No one had shot at Luke Johnson in three months.

The Night Janitor is written in the third person point of view of Luke, Annamaria and Clyde. The action is relentless, given that life and death are hanging in the balance.

But there were some things that stuck out. It’s hard to believe that a nurse would be so adept at handling guns, or why she even has a gun in the first place. We don’t come to know of any threat to her life.

Also, a lot more could have been done to show why Annamaria was so angry with Luke, other than the inciting incident.

Even though the abilities of the siblings are supernatural in nature, they feel completely plausible in the story. Even so, I would have liked to have known how they had first become aware of their powers. Had matters of faith and belief been brought into the mix, it would have been an added bonus.

The character of Clyde started out strong but fizzled out midway through, only to assume control of his actions once again towards the end of the book.

I don’t know if the author plans to work on a sequel, but I hope he thinks about it, especially given the powers of yet another character that we come to know of. There are pharma companies and hospitals that would definitely object to healing powers.

(I read this book through NetGalley.)