Reviews with content warning for Grief - Hell House

I did enjoy this more than I thought I was going to. I got this as a blind date with a book, so I didn’t know what is was(I wasn’t happy with it to be honest). It’s like the hunting of hill house, but I enjoyed this more because there was a lot of action. I was never scared, but I was disgusted. I don’t know why most horror has to have such gross sexual content in it. Honestly I would probably skip this, but it wasn’t horrible.

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hannanni41's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

The best parts of this book are ripped from Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, the worst parts are nasty and misogynistic

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childofmongreldogs's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Took me a bit to think about how I feel about this one, but I have to say that I don't think I particularly liked it.

The writing was good. I love Richard Matheson's short fiction so it wasn't a problem with the actual quality of the prose itself which has me feeling a certain kind of way about this novel. I will also say that the actual storyline itself was good as well. The twists and turns kept me on the edge of my seat. This feels like the definition of a genre. The ultimate kind of haunted house story.

The way I was on edge throughout the story was next level. Not really terrifying but I think that a lot of the tension was well done. I think that Matheson was an absolutely phenomenal writer.

I just can't jive with horror novels from this era, I think. There's too much that is bad writing to me because it fundamentally misunderstands certain people. I know that that is a controversial opinion to have: I don't like this novel because it's depiction of women is bad and it's depiction of the LGBT group is bad and it's depiction of people other than white straight men is bad, but it is what it is.

There's always a lot of handwringing and excuses for it being a different time so having an indigenous man's spirit talk like a cave man, a possible lesbian be a lesbian because she was sexually molested, and have women be generally overly emotional and easy to control (among other things like in other novels) is just something we have to forgive, just a quirk of the time, instead of being seen as a legitimate problem in the writing.

Is this the worst offender of these issues? Probably not. I'm currently reading one that's even worse, really, from a fundamental level. The problem though is that being slightly better or on the lighter end of awful for the time period isn't enough for me to forgive that form of writing. I think there's a place for making things uncomfortable for the reader, but it was lazy even then to make it uncomfortable for women by simply filling the story with violent rape of the female characters.

I can see that there's some aspects of this novel that are really good and interesting. It doesn't make up for the "problematic" nature of the novel in other ways for me.

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mauvesoul's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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