A review by sleepingwtlo
Caveat Emptor by Devon De'ath

dark mysterious 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? No

1.75

Please note: this review will include some spoilers.

Let’s start by saying that the premise of Caveat Emptor is really quite brilliant. A real estate agent stuck with a dangerously haunted house on his books is a great concept, with room for humour, heartbreak, and, of course, horror.

And author Devon De’Ath (see what he did there?) does horror well - and thank goodness for that. There’s some genuinely gruesome set pieces at play here, and a flair for writing encroaching dread that had me continuing to read even when other elements had me wanting to consign this one to the DNF pile. I, unlike reluctant agent David, was all too eager to return to Meoria Grange, and see what horrors awaited its next owners.

But, of course, there are those aforementioned other elements - and, friendly reminder given that I’ve seen no end of five-star reviews for Caveat Emptor, feel free to chalk these up to personal preference. Like what you like, friends.

With the novel taking place over several decades, De’Ath works hard to evoke different eras from chapter to chapter. Unfortunately, these constant references to contemporary technology, awkward slang, and time-relevant events started to grate after a while. The prose is already pretty description heavy, and it just felt like another layer that didn’t need to be there - a simple '“February 1985” as a chapter title would have have had much the same effect, especially given that this should be a story about David and the house, not about the period they’re in.

Indeed, as a whole, Caveat Emptor feels like a missed opportunity. It is absolutely about what the blurb says it’s about, sure, but having David spend more time at the house, researching it further each time it returns to the market, and even showing more potential buyers (read: potential victims) around the property would have gone a long way. Instead, David just goes about his day until the final reveal - and, at the risk of sounding a lot like his ex-wife, David is rather dull.

Speaking of the ex-wife, this brings me, unfortunately, to my biggest gripe with Caveat Emptor. Its women.

Women are, most frequently, the subject of the house’s most violent attacks, and, given the way the finale plays out, this does make sense. But I was deeply uncomfortable with the cartoonishly evil characterisation of David’s ex-wife Kate, the over sexualised descriptions of his eighteen year old daughter Amanda,
and the casual fridging of psychic Sable.

Even if we allow for Sable’s death within the storyline
, and we accept that Kate is, in fact, just a colossal bitch, the characterisation of and writing around Amanda remains a huge issue for me. We have too much enthusiastic description of her (teenage) body and the way it moves
, while Amanda herself is depicted as almost deserving of her awful fate that befalls her - something that doesn’t seem to match up with De’Ath’s decision to make it clear that it’s Kate’s influence that’s made her this way. Personally, I think she’s just a teenager - and even that doesn’t warrant what happens to her in the cellar of Meoria Grange.


And that’s even before we get to the quite frankly ridiculous plot device of having her sleeping with her mother’s new boyfriend. The line “Amanda bounced up and down like a child enjoying a ride on her first Pogo stick” will never leave my brain, and I’m furious about it.


I’d also like to think that, even if my ex-wife had turned my daughter against me in the years since our divorce, I’d at least put up a bit of a fight before letting her live in a house haunted by something so frighteningly violent. David, it seems, doesn’t see the point in trying - save for sharing a few scary stories during their viewing.

Until Kate and Amanda came to view the house,
I might have written Caveat Emptor off as a serviceable horror. The writing wasn’t particularly to my taste, but the scares were solid - as I said, De’Ath nails the horror sequences - and the concept felt too good to pass up. But, just as they entered Meoria Grange and sealed their fates, so too did Caveat Emptor seal its own.
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