A review by rebeckareads
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

challenging dark reflective tense slow-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Rated 9.2 using the CAWPILE rating system.

I'm still nursing a book hangover after finishing House of Leaves last night, so I'll try and make this review brief(er then the book itself).
Cosmic horror and ergodic literature are both things I have a weak spot for (if done correctly). That combined with the fact that I suffer from claustrophobia, resulted in this being a very tense, challenging read for me. It would have been a solid 5 star read for me but... I don't know, something just rubbed me the wrong way about
the ending and how it altered my perception of the book. It made sense and tied in nicely to previous events in the book - I just didn't like it personally.
Call me petty but it annoyed me enough to take 0.25 stars off.'

UPDATE 22nd July 2021: I just watched NightMind's video series analysing HoL; it made my jaw drop and up my rating to 5 solid stars. It basically did all the hard work for me and made me understand and analyse the book in a different way. Now I desperately want to re-read and annotate this. (The first part of NightMind's series can be found here: https://youtu.be/kfVztT3UeYw)
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