The Cellar

Meredith and Heather Willis are sisters dealing with the recent death of their father, and with the new kid who has moved in next door. Check it out on goodreads. Or read my review, and then decide whether you want to bother or not.

What is good about this book... hmmm. Well, there exists this genre of horror for people who don't like horror. This is one of them. The Cellar reads about one level up from a Goosebumps story, so this is not a real horror story. So, there is the good. Now, everything else.

To begin, the dialog. The characters in this book talk exactly like an old person thinks teens should sound like. Example, “Maybe it's his cologne. Eau de hunk.”... “Maybe I should try some. Think they sell that at Hollister?”(egalley pg 117).
An actual line from pg 157: “He would have his forever bride.” And, because they are teen girls, Heather and Meredith say “Oh, my God” every other line on every page! OMG! All teens talk like that all of time! Like, wow!

Adrien, the creature/lover boy is so 1980's lame with his permanent sunglasses and red Camaro that he is laughable. Heather is not fleshed out at all, all she gets to be is depressed (and to say OMG!)

The thing that really drove me nuts was the constantly changing POV. We are with Meredith, then in Heather's head somehow, and then we are with Adrien-with no transition, and all in the same section of the same chapter. I was so confused at one point...

After an incident with smell, we are informed that our main narrator has an eye condition and that may make her unreliable. What that has to do with smelling her dad's cologne is beyond me. I have never heard of an eye condition that could explain giant bugs crawling up your leg either, but these authors have. The same eye condition explains away bugs in Adrien's eye sockets as well bodies hanging on chains in the basement. Hmm.

A.J. Whitten is the pen name for Shirley Jump, a grocery store romance novelist (you know those romance novels they sell next to magazines, but not next to the bestsellers? Jump wrote The Cellar with her teenage daughter.

To write a really fantastic horror driven book I really believe that you have to love the genre. So of course when I heard that A.J. Whitten was a horror movie buff I was excited to read this book! Who better to regale me with truly terrifying thoughts and gory scenes than someone who loves the genre as much as I do? I'll admit that I was a little skeptical about the addition of the Romeo and Juliet theme. How on earth could they tie that in to a book like this? That just made me all the more eager to dive right in.

From the very beginning The Cellar draws you right in. Setting up the family relationship, pitting the sisters against one another, and then bringing in the mysterious Adrien. Let me tell you, from the moment Adrien showed up in the book I knew he was bad news. A.J. Whitten manages to build this aura around him that, without even knowing quite why, you are wary of him. I love that in a good horror book! Adrien's character drew me further in and I knew that I was in for a ride.

Now, here's where I have to interject a little bit about what prevented this book from in my absolute favorites. I was so smitten with everything that was going on, until the history behind Adrien came into focus. I'll try to explain this without giving anything away, but it might be a bit vague. I liked that Adrien had an emotional side to him that made him more human. However, I think that the middle section of the story was kind of slow because of it. I understand that A.J. Whitten was trying to build that human aspect so that Heather's romance made sense, I really do. However I was hoping for more of the horror driven scenes I was craving. I wasn't aware, I think, of how much romance was truly present in this book.

That being said, I'm still going to stick to my guns and say that this book really impressed me! Anyone that can tie together romance and horror has a spot in my heart. Throw in some references to Romeo and Juliet, and I'm sure that this book is going to be a big hit when it finally hits shelves. For those of you who are expecting a more gory and disturbing book (think The Monstromologist), you'll probably enjoy this book like I did but want to go elsewhere for your horror fix.