Annette's Book Spot: haunted house

Showing posts with label haunted house. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Book Review: The Bargaining by Carly Anne West

While I found The Bargaining to be creepy in places, I also found it to be very slow and tedious.

Penny is suffering from some event that is slowly revealed as the story progresses. Her mother can't handle her acting out, so she sends her away to live with her dad and his new wife, April.

April is a Realtor who flips houses. She has just purchased an old Victorian, sight unseen, and is anxious to work on it over the summer. Since Penny's dad won't be around, she must come with April to live in this run down dump for the summer and help her with the restoration.

The house has much more to offer than just bad electrical and plumbing. Seems there's been some children disappear from the closest town many years ago, and no one will have anything to do with the old house and especially the deep woods surrounding the house.

Penny slowly tries to get to know some people in the small town, but most of them clam up as soon as she mentions she's living in that house. And the house is creeping her out. There are noises and a strange mural in one bedroom that changes...things get added as the story progresses. Then, Penny gets visits from small children who look like they are screaming, but no sound comes out.

Penny thinks she's losing it, but she believes it has something to do with the event that's been troubling her -- the loss of her "friend" that she blames herself for.

April is just frustrated because she can't find anyone to work on the house.

It's an interesting premise, and The Bargaining is downright spooky in some parts--even a bit horrifying. But mostly I found it to be very tedious. Once they get to the old house, nothing really happens until the climactic ending. Yes, there are spooky things, but it seems the same thing happens over and over, and it is many pages before Penny begins to sort things out.

I ended up feeling rather indifferent towards The Bargaining. It wasn't bad. The writing was fine, and the premise was interesting, but I just got a bit bored in the middle. I'm not really a horror reader, but some of the ghosty things were a bit confusing to me.

If you are a die-hard horror fan, and you like haunted houses The Bargaining might be for you. I don't feel like my time was wasted, and I never thought about not finishing it. The blurb compares it to The Shining and while it may have some plot elements in common, that comparison is a bit lofty when comparing the execution of the story.

Published by Simon Pulse, February 17, 2015
eARC obtained from Edelweiss
416 pages

Rating: 3/5

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Book Review: The Fall by Bethany Griffin

Although The Fall starts out really slowly, the creep factor builds and the tension mounts all the way through to the end.

Madeline Usher has been trapped by the House (of Usher). She is unable to leave and the house is literally sapping the life out of her. Just as her mother and other relatives before her, she has inherited the curse of the house.

How did she get to this point? The Fall is told by Madeline from two perspectives. A young, 9 or 10 year old Madeline and a 17 to 18 year old Madeline. This flipping back and forth really dragged on. Madeline has a twin brother who was sent away to boarding school when they were 8 years old. He rarely visited, and his parents sent him away to protect him from the house. They knew that the house had chosen Madeline for the curse.

There are a a lot of creepy, macabre things that happen. Their are three doctors that live with them, first to take care of Madeline's mother, then to take care of Madeline. Everyone around her ends up disappearing or dying and she is left alone with the strange doctors.

There's a machine they've built in a room that supposedly keeps the house from knowing what they are doing. This isn't explained very well; it's a plot device that never reaches its full potential, and that is too bad. I would have liked that to be better explained.

At the end, we only get the older Madeline's POV, and that's when the story gets very tense as she is trying to keep her sanity and figure out how to escape. It just takes way too long to get to that point.

I enjoyed the writing and the descriptions and I'm glad I read The Fall. Just be warned that this one creeps along slowly before eventually grabbing you. A great choice for the Halloween season, fans of Poe, and The Fall of the House of Usher will be intrigued by this homage.

Published by Greenwillow, October 7, 2014
eARC obtained from Edelweiss
432 pages

Rating: 3.5/5

Monday, December 16, 2013

Book Tour and Review: Neverwas, by Kelly Moore, Tucker Reed & Larkin Reed

My Review:

I rarely read book blurbs. So, when I agreed to read Neverwas, I didn't know what I was getting into! I didn't remember details of Amber House, so when I started reading Neverwas, I was a bit confused. The world was different. The house was the same, but the country, the politics, and the personalities of some of the characters was totally different.

Then Sarah started having visions and receiving messages that were telling her things were wrong. Things were not the way they were supposed to be, and I realized that we are now in an alternate universe. How cool!

I won't go into too many details of this strange world, but the Nazis won the war, and there's no such thing as civil rights. But, some things are good! Sarah's parents get along great, and her mom has no intention of selling Amber House.

Jackson is helping Sarah to interpret her visions, and they decide that they must try to do something to make the world go back the way it was. Sarah has to figure out what she needs to change in the past, then she and Jackson have to figure out how to do it.

This quest is very exciting, but sometimes the solutions came a bit to easily (although not ALL the time!) I found the details of all the ancestors and what each of them did to be a little bit difficult to follow, but those details aren't really important. There's only a couple of people from the past that end up being critical to the events that changed the world.

I wish I would have been able to read Amber House again, right before Neverwas. You really need to read them in order, and I would have liked the details of Amber House to have been a bit more clear in my mind. I definitely recommend this series to teens who like a little paranormal adventure. We have ghosts, time travel, and visions (both past and present) to keep you entertained while you are visiting Amber House.

Don't leave yet! Scroll down to see my puzzle piece for the tour -- you can win a signed first edition copy of Neverwas!

Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, January 7, 2014
eBook obtained from the author
320 pages

Rating: 4/5

Here's my puzzle piece:

In NEVERWAS, Sarah must piece together the mystery of her forgotten past with the help of clues left behind by her great-grandmother, Fiona Warren. For readers interested in the chance to win a signed first-edition hardback of NEVERWAS -- with an exclusive hint for what's in story for Sarah in the final book, OTHERWHEN, hidden inside -- visit each blog on the tour for the month of December, collect the various lines from the poem, arrange them in the proper order, and submit the final sonnet by New Year's Day for a chance to win the special copy of NEVERWAS! Submit your poem to: http://www.amberhouseblog.com/

Visit these blogs to find previously posted puzzle pieces on the tour:

Whispering Pretty Stories
Marie Loves Books

Bibliophilic Monologues
Books Take You Places

Tomorrow's tour stop is:

Zach's YA Reviews

About the authors:

KELLY MOORE is a New York Times best-selling author, former litigator, and single mother of three. Her latest project, the young adult fiction series THE AMBER HOUSE TRILOGY, co-written with her two daughters and based loosely upon her own family history, examines fourteen generations of Maryland women and their ties to the past, present, and future. The first book in the series was nominated for the 2014 Dolly Gray Children's Literature Award for its realistic portrayal of characters with autism; Moore is outspoken about her inclusion in the autism spectrum, and is dedicated to autism awareness.

TUCKER REED is an award-winning fiction and nonfiction writer. She has been recognized on the national level for her short stories, essays and poetry. She is also a notable political blogger and has appeared on CNN, CBS, ABC and HuffPost Live, as well as featured in articles published by TIME magazine, Marie Claire magazine, Ms. magazine, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian, among numerous others.

LARKIN REED is a professional photographer, currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree in filmmaking. In 2013, Reed established her own multimedia production company, and has subsequently produced and directed several short films.