Buckle up, because this is a long review (for a long book).
Overall, I really liked this. It was chilly and atmospheric, the perfect amount of haunted house creepy in my opinion. As much as I wanted to keep reading, I’d have to put it away at night because I didn’t want to risk nightmares. It’s a long book — 600 pages/22 hours — but I never felt like it was dragging. There were a few points where I’d wonder how we had so much left when it felt like we were so close to figuring it out, but then another twist would appear and I’d forget I’d questioned anything. I loved the twists too; they never felt forced or too unbelievable and they kept me on my toes the whole time. I loved the haunted house, I loved the underlying voodoo aspects, and I loved rooting for Angie and her family. I was shocked from the start with what happens to Corey and the shocks kept coming as we pieced everything together. I also personally loved the ending, because I’m a sucker for that.
However, I do have some complaints that kept this from being *my* perfect horror and that I think are worth alerting others on. First, Myles was SO close to perfect. I was rooting for him. But you do not have sex with people who are asleep. I don’t care if you had consensual sex the night before. I hated that scene and how it was presented as him still loving her and it completely turned me off of him. My second issue has to do with the numerous trigger warnings. I get that most of these are expected in a horror book, but I hate that. I’d love a mystery/thriller/horror that *doesn’t* rely on homophobia to be scary if written by a straight person. Just like I don’t want one relying on racism to be written by a white person, because those are real horrors and if you’re not the targeted community, I don’t think you should be sensationalizing them. There’s homophobic language and plot lines that aren’t necessary, as well as use of the r-word. I will clarify that this book was originally published in the early 2000s though and while it does not excuse the language, it may no longer reflect the way Tananarive Due writes. Tariq and Corey’s inner monologues almost justifying domestic abuse also just made me feel icky.
Other trigger warnings include suicide, death of a child, animal cruelty, blood/gore, sexual assault and rape (including of a 13 year old girl), homophobia, racism, ableism, domestic abuse.
There’s also some discussion into the indigenous history of the setting, although I can’t speak to the accuracy of the representation.
Overall, I will absolutely be reading more Tananarive Due and I’m especially excited to dive into more of her more recent work.
Graphic: Blood, Child death, Murder, and Suicide
Moderate: Rape, Animal cruelty, Domestic abuse, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Racism, Homophobia, and Racial slurs
Minor: Ableism, Animal death, and Death of parent