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3.19 AVERAGE
3.19 AVERAGE
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
mysterious
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:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Blood, Stalking, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
challenging
dark
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:
Yes
⭐️ ⭐️
Critical Score: B-
Personal Score: D+
This is a bold exploration into the ethical murkiness of true crime media, but in being quite tedious itself, the novel fails to make its point that we can’t help but look away from such depravities. The book even ends by asking us if we were entertained, and the short answer is no. I was not.
The writing style kills the sense of story. The medium takes away any visual texture and makes it too hard to care for the characters. Which is the point. But you can’t make that point while also arguing that people love this kind of content, because I couldn’t stand reading this book.
Basically this thing is overconfident and doesn’t seem to understand what makes true crime engrossing. You need humanization and details for the depravity to work, and this novel has no humanity or details.
Ambitious but deeply flawed in execution.
Critical Score: B-
Personal Score: D+
This is a bold exploration into the ethical murkiness of true crime media, but in being quite tedious itself, the novel fails to make its point that we can’t help but look away from such depravities. The book even ends by asking us if we were entertained, and the short answer is no. I was not.
The writing style kills the sense of story. The medium takes away any visual texture and makes it too hard to care for the characters. Which is the point. But you can’t make that point while also arguing that people love this kind of content, because I couldn’t stand reading this book.
Basically this thing is overconfident and doesn’t seem to understand what makes true crime engrossing. You need humanization and details for the depravity to work, and this novel has no humanity or details.
Ambitious but deeply flawed in execution.
People develop new fears all the time. Funny enough, they never really lose a fear. It's always there. Waiting for a signal, a nervous impulse or shock, to return. Perhaps one day people will fear their home.
Anybody Home? is a deeply upsetting novel to read. It's disquieting, just how unsettling this story actually is. There's no ghouls haunting the pages here, there's no paranormal beings stalking their prey, sure, those things can be scary, and certainly have their place within the genre. But nothing will ever match the pure, unbridled terror of one's own deep-rooted insecurities and fears coming true. See, this level of horror is personal, it taps into those thoughts that for many of us, are private, that perhaps we isolate from the rest of the world - That the place we call home, the place where we're supposed to be the safest, actually isn't safe at all.
This was, quite genuinely a horrible book to read. By selecting the second-person narrative for this tale, Seidlinger has made us readers complicit in these crimes. We're right there, watching these twisted events unfold. We're the audience for whom these atrocities are committed, after all, it's our own entertainment that's the reason for all of this. And, that's in part, why I love this novel so much, it's not a fun time, it's visceral and grotesque and distressing. The way in which this author describes the sensation of being watched while you're in your own home, of never truly being alone is disgusting, it made my skin crawl.
Could this story be a commentary on our obsessive love over true crime? Over humanities need to plunge itself into the private lives of victims just for some cheap entertainment? It might be. Or, it might be just another horror novel, I'll leave that decision to you. Either way, it certainly made me take a step back and examine my own relationship with the genre of true crime.
Just because those shrubs grow high, and the vines cover your windows, it doesn't mean that in the depths of the silence there isn't someone watching. We watched. We stepped inside these homes.
Anybody Home? is a deeply upsetting novel to read. It's disquieting, just how unsettling this story actually is. There's no ghouls haunting the pages here, there's no paranormal beings stalking their prey, sure, those things can be scary, and certainly have their place within the genre. But nothing will ever match the pure, unbridled terror of one's own deep-rooted insecurities and fears coming true. See, this level of horror is personal, it taps into those thoughts that for many of us, are private, that perhaps we isolate from the rest of the world - That the place we call home, the place where we're supposed to be the safest, actually isn't safe at all.
This was, quite genuinely a horrible book to read. By selecting the second-person narrative for this tale, Seidlinger has made us readers complicit in these crimes. We're right there, watching these twisted events unfold. We're the audience for whom these atrocities are committed, after all, it's our own entertainment that's the reason for all of this. And, that's in part, why I love this novel so much, it's not a fun time, it's visceral and grotesque and distressing. The way in which this author describes the sensation of being watched while you're in your own home, of never truly being alone is disgusting, it made my skin crawl.
Could this story be a commentary on our obsessive love over true crime? Over humanities need to plunge itself into the private lives of victims just for some cheap entertainment? It might be. Or, it might be just another horror novel, I'll leave that decision to you. Either way, it certainly made me take a step back and examine my own relationship with the genre of true crime.
Just because those shrubs grow high, and the vines cover your windows, it doesn't mean that in the depths of the silence there isn't someone watching. We watched. We stepped inside these homes.
I wanted to be scared by this book, but the way it was written made it hard to get immersed. That along with numerous typos and grammar issues made it somewhat hard to follow, no thanks to a second-person perspective. Interesting idea, but could've been done better.
I have been looking forward to reading this book for over a year now and, I have to say, it was a rather disappointing read. For those seeking a disturbing, gritty, and gory story, this won’t disappoint. But the premise that attracted me to it was simply not compelling enough. The whole point of the narrative style was to position the reader as both the writer of and a voyeur in such a scenario but, and this could very well be because I’m not a consumer of the horror genre, the rhetorical questions posed within the story were totally redundant in my case. What remained strong, however, was the feeling of being an apprentice of a truly depraved man, and what that said about the hypothetical person in my situation. But then we get to the actual home invasion and the story was no more interesting than that of a regular upper-class dysfunctional family who become unfortunate victims to a thoughtless crime. I presume that even as the book was bringing the reader into the mind of a killer, it was also telling the story of its victims. And maybe this was the point? That because we are the voyeurs, we want to be entertained and the story of that family was so generic that the thrills, so-to-speak, lay in the crime and the performance itself. If this were a test for psychopathy, I think I passed because I didn’t enjoy the torture scenes (although I think the gritty and almost gratuitous writing suited the purpose). But I suppose I was waiting for the story to become genuinely original (in the way Eric Larocca’s stories are) apart from its novel form.
P.S. a good alternative to it, although slightly different, is the 2014 movie Nightcrawler.
P.S. a good alternative to it, although slightly different, is the 2014 movie Nightcrawler.
challenging
dark
tense
medium-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
I made it about an hour into the audiobook and it became clear it was gonna just me some weirdly done torture porn and that's a no thank you from me.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
This was so entertaining! So many plot twists. I definitely recommend for those who are fans of The Purge, Black Mirror and maybe even Squid Games??