Rating: ★★
Four strangers descend on a haunted house in a secluded part of the countryside to study the paranormal activities that occur there – what could go wrong? This has been called the best “haunted house” story ever written, and while parts of it were definitely scary, this book just wasn’t what I was expecting and I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t as terrified as I was expecting to be.
The plot structure of this book is the typical haunted house structure that we see in horror movies to this day. The setting is also typical of the genre, and I found the house itself super interesting, as it’s built like a maze and it’s like a character driving the story forwards. Shirley Jackson’s writing style is interesting, unique and quirky. The dialogue between her characters is genuinely really funny, at times and when she decided to amp up the terror, I was quite afraid, although there wasn’t enough of this for my liking!
The scary scenes were quite few and far between and between, and the writing felt too quirky and the characters too weird to keep the terror up. Once the scary scenes were over; the characters were back to being funny and joking with each other. I found this increasingly confusing as it went on, particularly as they all seemed completely unaffected by the events happening. Halfway through the book, new characters were introduced, which made everything even more confusing.
Maybe I just didn’t “get” this book, because it is constantly hailed as the greatest in its genre, but it just didn’t impress me as much as I was hoping. I wanted it to leave me terrified, but instead I was mostly confused. The book isn’t very long, but it felt a lot longer than it was which isn’t a great sign.
Ink Drops Books 