The Toll House

This ghost story is...okay. There's quite a bit of atmosphere, and I felt a sense of the house as a real location, to the point where I could draw you a floorplan of the layout. But the story is solidly middle of the road. There's no real original ideas, and the pair of revelations at the end feel unearned and unnecessary - in fact they're a little frustrating as if the author had leaned into them earlier the book it might have felt a little fresher. Some of the secondary characters just fizzle out, and there's one plot contrivance that made me winch a bit. That said, there's nothing really wrong with the book, and I enjoyed the couple of hours I spent with it, but ultimately it's a competent entry in the genre and that's all.