Reviews with content warning for Murder - A Head Full of Ghosts

I want to start off by saying I often see this book described as a super scary and disturbing horror novel (which was initially what brought me to reading it) and it’s not. To me, this novel is moreso sad and gut wrenching than scary. It’s less paranormal possession horror and more real life, mental illness, and family splitting ‘horror’.

I will say, it felt real. I liked the story being told from an unreliable, naive narrator. It felt plausible, like it could happen to any one of us. I initially didn’t mind the blog entries - I did feel like they pulled me out of the story, but not necessarily in a bad way (not until the third one, anyway). I liked the supposed outsider POV and the foreshadowing we got from them.

I do wish, though, that the poisoning of the family was moreso alluded to than outright told to us in the third blog post. I feel like it could’ve create much more tension if it was brought up in Merry’s descriptions to begin with.

All in all, I would say the first 2 parts of this book were fantastic. Where it began to lose me was part 3. The pacing seemed to change and became too fast. Everything seemed to happen and more or less resolve instantly as it was brought up. I wish the third part could’ve maintained the same atmosphere and pacing and story telling that the other two had. I would say this book is worth a read, though. I did enjoy it, it just was not quite what I was expecting or hoping for.

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readingwithgoose's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

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brookey8888's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad medium-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

3.5

I don’t know how I feel about this book. It was interesting and the way it was told was intriguing, but it kind of just made me sad. Also I’m pretty sure this is classified as horror, but there was maybe like one creepy part(that I skipped over because I do not need to read graphic details about a 14 year old masturbating). Honestly it was just depressing to read about these girls and the mental illness and honestly the annoying father(which is kind of the point, but I just didn’t really expect that). I also did not like the ending like it was just so anticlimactic.

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james1star's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective 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

3.0

This is the third book by Tremblay I’ve read and I will not be reading any more because once again this was just very meh. The story is told through the POV of Merry who is now twenty three as she’s talking with a reporter about the anniversary of a TV show airing that focused on her family. As she’s talking we’re transported back to Merry at age eleven and how her fourteen year old sister Marjorie starts to deal with a mental health illness (schizophrenia?) that is later thought to be the result of her being possessed. Their father consults the ‘expertise’ of a Father Wanderley who pushes for an exorcism. Media coverage of the family begins and so does a TV show leading up to Marjorie’s exorcism. The family deal with financial issues and there’s a possibility Marjorie is faking it but we don’t really know.

The more horror-ish elements of the book were alright I’d say, it’s more psychological and a lot of Marjorie’s actions were typical of the ‘possessed’ person which were rather gross and unpleasant to read. It did feel a little like a rip-off of the film ‘The Exorcist’ at times and just generally wasn’t the most intriguing read. Much of the story rests on the idea of what is and isn’t the truth and whilst I was interested at the start, I didn’t really care as the book developed and the characters were all very meh that I just lost interest. I think the book can appeal to more people then the others I read by Tremblay (Cabin and Pallbearers) but once again it just fell flat proving to be an unenjoyable reading experience on the whole.

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atthediscotech's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

Ending was good until “The twist”. The twist made it less interesting. 3.5 bc the twist was a let down. I would have given it 5 without it

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