The story opens in 1993 when Jessie Campanelli is a sulky 13-year-old whose mother has just grounded her after a nosy neighbor saw her smoking a cigarette at a nearby playground. Life is so unfair in that special way only 13-year-olds think it's unfair, and here comes her baby brother, 8-year-old Paul, pestering her to play a board game. Jessie is not having it and just wants to be left alone, so after a sibling spat (where she keeps calling him "Paulie" and he tells her to stop calling him that - he's grown-up now!) Jessie dares him to go into the old, abandoned McIntyre house. The house sticks out like a sore thumb on their quiet Chicago street, and it's been abandoned for years - ever since the McIntyre patriarch brutally murdered his family and then committed suicide. Kids have broken into the creepy house before, including a boy who fell through the rotting staircase and almost lost his leg. But a dare is a dare - so Paul gathers up his courage, takes along his friends, Richie and Jake, and enters the house. When neighbors hear the terrified screams of Richie and Jake, they break down the front door. Richie is relatively OK, Jake has lost his arm, and Paul is nowhere to be found. It's like the house swallowed him whole.
Paul's disappearance shatters Jessie's family in unimaginable ways and as the story moves forward in time there are more victims. The house particularly seems to have a taste for children and with more "disappearances" the house becomes stronger, a malevolent force with tentacles reaching out for more victims. Nobody seems to be able to stop it, not Jessie's father who tried to burn it down, not the city who finally shows up to demolish it. The house continues to stand, continues to claim victims, until Jessie, now an adult, thinks she's found a way.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that I can't say no to a house story - be it the English house party, the Gothic manor, for the creepy haunted house. Henry builds good atmosphere with this story - the house is suitably creepy, with a high body count and moderately high levels of gore (look, this is a horror story...). The Chicago setting is pitch-perfect, and there's a Gen X feel to the story and characters that tickled me - although Jessie being born in 1980, I guess you can make the argument she's a millennial, but whatever - the book starts out in the 1990s I'm calling it Gen X.
The audiobook was engaging and this story did keep me entertained, but...
C'mon, you knew that was coming...
Y'all this is Tell-y AF. Tell, tell, tell. Endless telling. Everything about this story feels relayed to the reader, like we're all sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows. I was never immersed in the action of the book as events were unfolding. It's all relayed to the reader. It's just not terribly immersive or well-written y'all - yes, even though the story is engaging and the characters are interesting. All the telling feels extremely paint-by-numbers. In fact, I'm convinced that even though I was engaged by the audiobook version, I think had I tried to read this it would have been more of a slog.
So where does that leave me? Lord, I don't know. Again, I love me a haunted house story and the vibes are suitably creepy here. Also it damn near made me nostalgic for the 1990s even though that decade was not all sunshine and lollipops. Entertaining, yes. Gushing adoration, no. Would I recommend it? Eh, it depends. No regrets, but this one could have a been a showstopper and just...wasn't.
Final Grade = B-
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