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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
Would recommend for people who like stories about the supernatural. It was well crafted and I cared about what happened to the protagonists. I chose the novel from this category only because it fit a challenge in which I participate, and it was a fast read as anticipated.
This book was okay. I didn't connect to the characters and I thought Hannah's mental health could have been a bigger part that added to the story. There wasn't really anything scary at all. I didn't even think the book was very creepy. Maybe this would be a good shorter book for someone new to horror, but it's also pretty slow.
As a child I loved the ABC Movie of the Week and other made-for-TV movie series that were 'Must See TV' in the era just before universal cable television access. The seventies was a golden era for TV movies. Television was considered a respectable platform which was outpacing movie theaters. People had moved away from the cities and the old neighborhood movie theaters and had to drive further to get to the mall cineplex. Often, we just opted to stay at home in front of 'in living color' consoles, eating less expensive snacks and enjoying all six channels. When a Hollywood blockbuster (such as a James Bond Movie or 2001 a Space Odyssey) was first shown on TV, it was a big deal and a lot of people stayed in to watch. TV movies were still attracting big name talent. Many aging movie stars from Hollywood's heyday showed up in newer made-for-TV fare and enjoyed a second career in the genre. (Barbara Stanwyck immediately comes to mind.)
The seventies was also the era of the occult and supernatural suspense thriller. I formed an immediate attraction to these plots and loved nothing more than staying up later than I should to watch movies like "When Michael Calls", "Burnt Offerings", "The Dark Secret of Harvest Home", "See No Evil" and "Crowhaven Farm". Many of the films depicted city people moving to a historic (and haunted) house in the country to get away from urban stress or family problems. Once they arrive in the new and rustic environment, they are confronted with a culture and a people whom they do not understand and who are either brusque and unwelcoming....or all too welcoming in a creepy and menacing way. It was a bit of a formula for sure. But one that I revisited time and again to my great delight as a kid. (Youtube has given these movies a new forum and a new audience. My husband and I seek them out and re-watch them as adults.)
Thus, when the plot of The Ghost Notebooks revealed itself to be a story about a young NYC couple, Nick and Hannah, who relocate to out of the way upstate burg, Hibernia, NY for a job opportunity in a haunted house/historical society/museum, I raced home to read it post haste. To make the plot even more attractive to me, personally, Hannah works as a historian and Nick works as a sound engineer. I am a history geek with a library degree who has spent time volunteering at my local historical society (which is located in a historic old home.) My musical husband majored in audio engineering at college. The parallels are just too perfectly spooky! (Except for the age part...my spouse and I have twenty years on this young hipster pair in the book.)
Hannah (just like many of the women in those seventies movies) has some emotional problems and is fragile. Her parents are worried about the move to a new job and a new environment being too much for her. Nick and Hannah are also newly engaged, which means another life transition. But Nick and Hannah shrug off these concerns are are exhilarated by the opportunity to start fresh in a place where Hannah can do the work she loves (and she has landed my dream job!) and where Nick can focus on writing some music of his own rather than mixing it for others.
They arrive at the Edmund Wright house, which will become their new home. Wright was a (fictitious) local author from the mid 1800s who began to explore spiritualism after his son, William, died in a freak accident. Wright moved away from his literary pursuits and began to devote more time to efforts to commune with spirits. And, as we learned as we sat in front of the old cathode ray tube back in the seventies, it is dangerous to play with spirits in an old and secluded house.
Not long after arriving at the Wright House, Hannah, of course, begins to be sucked into its web. Nick (who is our narrator) is left to pick up the pieces and to try to discover the secrets that Edmund Wright had also pursued so long ago.
Altogether, Ben Dolnick (who looks far too young to have been up watching ABC Mystery Movie of the Week) has channeled (channeled...get it?...I could not resist!) the pacing and feel of these old films and has filled his macabre story with character types I recall so well. Yet, the story is also contemporary in every way and younger readers (or older readers who were not TV suspense movie addicts) will be able to read The Ghost Notebooks as a straight up creeper for these dark and dreary November evenings.
Dolnick is rather well known and well reviewed, from what I can determine. This is my first experience reading him and I know I would like to make sure it is not my last.
The seventies was also the era of the occult and supernatural suspense thriller. I formed an immediate attraction to these plots and loved nothing more than staying up later than I should to watch movies like "When Michael Calls", "Burnt Offerings", "The Dark Secret of Harvest Home", "See No Evil" and "Crowhaven Farm". Many of the films depicted city people moving to a historic (and haunted) house in the country to get away from urban stress or family problems. Once they arrive in the new and rustic environment, they are confronted with a culture and a people whom they do not understand and who are either brusque and unwelcoming....or all too welcoming in a creepy and menacing way. It was a bit of a formula for sure. But one that I revisited time and again to my great delight as a kid. (Youtube has given these movies a new forum and a new audience. My husband and I seek them out and re-watch them as adults.)
Thus, when the plot of The Ghost Notebooks revealed itself to be a story about a young NYC couple, Nick and Hannah, who relocate to out of the way upstate burg, Hibernia, NY for a job opportunity in a haunted house/historical society/museum, I raced home to read it post haste. To make the plot even more attractive to me, personally, Hannah works as a historian and Nick works as a sound engineer. I am a history geek with a library degree who has spent time volunteering at my local historical society (which is located in a historic old home.) My musical husband majored in audio engineering at college. The parallels are just too perfectly spooky! (Except for the age part...my spouse and I have twenty years on this young hipster pair in the book.)
Hannah (just like many of the women in those seventies movies) has some emotional problems and is fragile. Her parents are worried about the move to a new job and a new environment being too much for her. Nick and Hannah are also newly engaged, which means another life transition. But Nick and Hannah shrug off these concerns are are exhilarated by the opportunity to start fresh in a place where Hannah can do the work she loves (and she has landed my dream job!) and where Nick can focus on writing some music of his own rather than mixing it for others.
They arrive at the Edmund Wright house, which will become their new home. Wright was a (fictitious) local author from the mid 1800s who began to explore spiritualism after his son, William, died in a freak accident. Wright moved away from his literary pursuits and began to devote more time to efforts to commune with spirits. And, as we learned as we sat in front of the old cathode ray tube back in the seventies, it is dangerous to play with spirits in an old and secluded house.
Not long after arriving at the Wright House, Hannah, of course, begins to be sucked into its web. Nick (who is our narrator) is left to pick up the pieces and to try to discover the secrets that Edmund Wright had also pursued so long ago.
Altogether, Ben Dolnick (who looks far too young to have been up watching ABC Mystery Movie of the Week) has channeled (channeled...get it?...I could not resist!) the pacing and feel of these old films and has filled his macabre story with character types I recall so well. Yet, the story is also contemporary in every way and younger readers (or older readers who were not TV suspense movie addicts) will be able to read The Ghost Notebooks as a straight up creeper for these dark and dreary November evenings.
Dolnick is rather well known and well reviewed, from what I can determine. This is my first experience reading him and I know I would like to make sure it is not my last.
The Ghost Notebooks by Ben Dolnick is one of those books reviewers pray for, a story that absorbs you completely and carries you along so that you forget the reviewing aspect and once more become a pure, unadulterated reader. Hannah and Nick are a young couple living in New York who find their relationship in crisis. They survive this difficulty, marry and take themselves off to live and work in an historic house in rural Hibernia, a house that once belonged to the 19th century writer, Edmund Wright. Here they discover the tragedy which befell the man and Hannah starts to hear voices, whisperings in the night. As the story progresses, Hannah’s mental health deteriorates – an aspect of Hannah’s past Ben knows very little about as neither she, nor her parents, have ever been totally forthcoming about a breakdown in her earlier life. Hannah eventually disappears but after the discovery of her body, Nick digs deeper into her psychiatric history in an attempt to discover whether she killed herself or whether her death had been accidental. What he discovers leads him to look into the reasons behind her death, how ‘haunted’ the house is and how tormented Hannah had become. The story continues apace with his own institutionalisation as a result of his grief-stricken and erratic behaviour but he escapes and returns to Wright’s house, determined to put an end to the hauntings there. Fluent prose, atmospheric and striking a perfect gothic note, this was a wonderful read.
I finished The Ghost Notebooks earlier this month, and although it wasn’t a major page-turner for me, I still enjoyed the narrative and the writing style. In a nutshell, it’s about a couple, Hannah and Nick, who move into a live-in house museum in which they become the caretakers. However, the house is very old and is inhabited by the spirits of its former tenants, some of which begin to torment Hannah (I promise it’s not as creepy and paranormal as it sounds). The book greatly centers around mental illness — the different ways in which it manifests and the varying ways people cope with it. It’s not what I would call a “happy” story by any means (definitely not a light summer read), but I found it interesting nonetheless (and it’s relatively short, so it reads quite quickly).
fast-paced
This is one of those reviews I'm having trouble writing. Partly because there isn't a lot of action in the book and the reason I actually liked it probably had more to do with the atmosphere in it and not the actual action. First I have to say I think the cover does this book a huge disservice. Had I not investigated more, I would have had no idea it was a horror read. Then again, nothing about it was really horrific so I think advertising it as horror is a disservice to readers. See, I'm all over the place already.
"The Ghost Notebooks" tells the story of Nick and Hannah. They reside in New York but when Hanna gets laid off, she seeks a job as a museum curator/director of the Wright House - a local tourist attraction in Hibernia, New York. Since it is in a very remote location they actually live on the property as well and although Nick is hesitant at first, he knows Hannah needs a change and this move might just be what he needs to reignite his music career.
Once Nick and Hannah arrive, strange occurrences begin to happen. Plus, Hannah sort of goes off the deep in but Nick accounts this to past mental issues and the fact that he learned she is off her medication. Then something happens that turns his world upside down and sends Nick down the rabbit hole of madness.
I picked this book up on a whim as it was not my planned next read. It is quite slow at times, but that didn't really bother me because it coincided with the story and also, being a relatively short book, it didn't feel dragged out. I didn't really feel an intense connection with either Nick or Hannah, but did care enough about them to what to know what happens to them. I also remained curious about the Wright House and the secrets it held. The book is divided into three parts and to be honest, although the ending wrapped things up nicely, it felt like a let-down and probably contributed more the the 3/5 rating than anything else. The first and second parts definitely rated higher.
If you like slower paced atmospheric reads, and you enjoyed "haunted" tales, then you might be interested in "The Ghost Notebooks." However, don't go into this expecting a lot of horror, or you will probably be most disappointed.
I received this book from the Penguin First to Read program in exchange for an honest review.
"The Ghost Notebooks" tells the story of Nick and Hannah. They reside in New York but when Hanna gets laid off, she seeks a job as a museum curator/director of the Wright House - a local tourist attraction in Hibernia, New York. Since it is in a very remote location they actually live on the property as well and although Nick is hesitant at first, he knows Hannah needs a change and this move might just be what he needs to reignite his music career.
Once Nick and Hannah arrive, strange occurrences begin to happen. Plus, Hannah sort of goes off the deep in but Nick accounts this to past mental issues and the fact that he learned she is off her medication. Then something happens that turns his world upside down and sends Nick down the rabbit hole of madness.
I picked this book up on a whim as it was not my planned next read. It is quite slow at times, but that didn't really bother me because it coincided with the story and also, being a relatively short book, it didn't feel dragged out. I didn't really feel an intense connection with either Nick or Hannah, but did care enough about them to what to know what happens to them. I also remained curious about the Wright House and the secrets it held. The book is divided into three parts and to be honest, although the ending wrapped things up nicely, it felt like a let-down and probably contributed more the the 3/5 rating than anything else. The first and second parts definitely rated higher.
If you like slower paced atmospheric reads, and you enjoyed "haunted" tales, then you might be interested in "The Ghost Notebooks." However, don't go into this expecting a lot of horror, or you will probably be most disappointed.
I received this book from the Penguin First to Read program in exchange for an honest review.
I can't quite decide if this book was genius or awful, or somewhere in between. The plot takes multiple turns and none of them are quite developed enough to feel like the author knew what he was doing, yet at the end of the book I wasn't disappointed. At most its worst, it felt like a 500 page book that was cut in half. At it's best it was a pretty compelling ghost story.
Thanks to Penguin First to Read for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
Thanks to Penguin First to Read for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
I did enjoy this book. I didn't really know what to expect, and there was a lack of ghosts for the majority of the book. Where the book lacked in ghosts, it was full of a deep emotional journey.
The turmoil that Nick felt was palpable.
The turmoil that Nick felt was palpable.
2.5 ⭐️'s. I really enjoyed the first quarter of this book, but then I felt like it climaxed too quickly & even the ending felt rushed. I would have loved further description of Hannah's descent into madness. The following three quarters primarily felt predictable, although there was one little twist that did cause me to audibly gasp. Overall, I'd say this book was just fine, nothing spectacular, and not enough ghosts!