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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
Finally finished every Riley Sager book for no real reason. I actually quite enjoyed this one, the characters were believable and not glamorized, the twists were well paced and the ending was solid.
A very entertaining and modern take on the haunted house genre. Gets delightfully meta, but without jumping up its own butt like many meta horror books do. Very entertaining and spooky read!
mysterious
fast-paced
adventurous
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
Loved this little thriller and all of its twists and turns! It kept me guessing up to the last chapter!!!
Read September 2, 2023 — Now October 20, 2023 and I’m realizing I liked this more than I initially thought.
A link to a chapter by chapter summary that I enjoy looking at:
my link text
A link to a chapter by chapter summary that I enjoy looking at:
my link text
I really wanted to like this one but I couldn’t connect to the characters, the plot was unbelievable and I ended up skimming through the last 1/4 of the book to get it done and count it towards my goal. Very unremarkable.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The beginning immediately reminded me of The Haunting of Hill House, which set high expectations for what I hoped would be a suspenseful, spooky read. However, the more pages I flipped, the more I found myself growing increasingly disappointed.
The pacing was a major issue for me, this book took far too long to pick up. The first 60% felt like a drag, with unnecessary descriptions and a slow-moving plot that had me extremely disengaged. I was struggling to stay interested. Personally, I think the book could have been shortened drastically to improve engagement. This is not to say that the writing itself was flawed by any means, the story just did not need to be stretched out over the course of nearly 400 pages.
I expected a thrilling story, full of twists and turns, yet I found the plot fairly weak. There were very few moments that spiked my heart rate ever so slightly. The twists felt underwhelming and did not make an impactful ending.
It is not the worst thriller I've read but for me, it just did not live up to all the hype surrounding this book.
It is not the worst thriller I've read but for me, it just did not live up to all the hype surrounding this book.