Within These Walls

Lou is a former famous true-crime writer who has fallen off the best seller list. So when he gets to interview a killer who has refused to talk to anyone in the press he can't pass it up. You know that saying if it's too good to be true than it probably is. See the catch is he has to live in the house where the murders happened with his daughter Virginia..

At first you think oh it just a haunted house story but the descriptions make you get goosebumps. Nothing is gory but it is definitely frightening and. It is easy for you to picture the creepy ghost reflected in the washroom mirror, the creaky rooms of the old house, or the abandoned orchard. The unsettling book fills you with dread. The ending is pretty intense in my opinion. Something I've read in books or seen in some movies but well done.

3.5 rounded up. I didn't really click with any of the characters except maybe the one that we know is dead from the start. The story wasn't bad just felt a bit drawn out for me.

Counting this as my Poland book around the world since the author is Polish :)

My second book by this author. The characters pulled me in from the very beginning, and best of all: the plot of this book did not go the way I thought it would, at all. This book was wonderfully creepy and better yet: wonderfully written. I really recommend her if you like thrillers and horror.

Incredibly creepy, twisted, well written, but in all honesty about 150pgs too long....

Not the best thing I've ever read. But not the worst, by far. I enjoyed this novel. It has a more literary sensibility than some genre offerings. There are some time line inconsistencies, and that makes trying to decipher people's ages wonky. And yes, the characters are frustrating, in particular Lucas and his daughter. But on the whole, for my first foray into cult horror, I gotta say that I enjoyed it. Rarely was a I bored. The misogyny infuriated me and creeped me out. The ghosty bits get confusing, as does the reasoning behind every overarching plan that Jeffrey Halcomb makes. Once could say the same about some enjoyable anime. Whatever.

It reminded me of Sinister (which I love). But trade Bughuul for a creepy Manson-esque cult leader. Essentially, failing true-crime writer Lucas Graham moves his daughter out to the Pacific Northwest for the summer, ostensibly to write a book about a cult leader who refuses to give interviews, a bloke named Jeffrey Halcomb. Halcomb actually reaches out to him, sends him a letter, and promises to allow Lucas to interview him if Lucas lives in the house where Halcomb lived in 1983. The house where eight of his followers committed suicide one day, where he murdered a senator's daughter and her baby, during some sort of ritual.

And because he is desperate, with a flagging career and failing marriage, Lucas does it. Whilst the wife is in Italy on a business trip with her probable affair, Lucas drags his emo tween daughter to Washington State to work on a book that he hopes will revive his career and save his marriage.

And then the excrement hits the air conditioning, and weirdness happens.

The weirdness often creeped me out, but not as much as the cult's interactions with each other and the world did. That being said, I couldn't quite buy into Lucas' daughter's obsession with Halcomb. She wasn't the worst kid in horror I've read, and I suppose the ghosts worked their mojo on her. But there was something in the way she and Lucas interacted that frustrated me, that didn't quite ring true. Or maybe I'm just not into the trope of the moody emo teen. It's the trope that irks me, not the actual emo kids.

This could have been edited down, sure; but it's not all that long a read, and it held my attention sufficiently that I was never bored. So, yeah, I had fun. It creeped me out. A solid three-star tale.

Perfectly serviceable horror, I'm sure, but the ending was very much not my thing. Spoilers ahead... If you're like me and the main thing that bothers you about the horror genre is its penchant for endings that feel pointless and destroy all the main characters, with evil coming out victorious, then you might want to skip this book.