The Night House
by Jo Nesbo
Summary
In the wake of his parents’ tragic deaths in a house fire, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote, insular town of Ballantyne. Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible for his disappearance. No one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie. No one, that is, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. He traces the number that Tom prank-called from the phone booth to an abandoned house in the Black Mirror Wood. There, he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices begin to whisper in his ear…
You know who I am. She’s going to burn. The one you love is going to burn. There’s not a thing you can do about it.
When another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence–and preserve his sanity–as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne and pursuing his destruction.
Then again, Richard may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story…
My Review
3.5 stars
This was the first book I’ve read by this author. I absolutely loved the cover art; it’s really what sold me on reading this story. The writing is top-notch, immersive, and descriptive. He did a great job of bringing me into this world and meeting the characters.
There are three parts to this story, and each part feels like its own short story. They all do weave together, and things make sense by the time we get to the end, but while reading each part, it did feel a bit disjointed and clunky. They didn’t seamlessly flow together, which took me out of the story as I had to acclimate to each section because they were jarringly different.
With the first part, it felt like a middle grade R.L. Stine horror story, which I enjoyed. I grew up reading R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike back in the late 80s and early 90s, and the first part of the story felt really nostalgic. However, I thought the horror scenes would keep building on top of each other and continuously get more gruesome or scarier, but unfortunately, they didn’t, which was disappointing. I wanted a lot more horror than what we got. But it did keep my interest because I kept wanting to know what was going to happen next and get explanations of all the strange things going on.
But then, once I got to the second part of the book, it really started to go downhill for me. It felt flat and began to lose my interest. There are scenes toward the end of part two that felt like a fever dream, where I was just confused and ready for the book to be over. But I still wanted to know what was truly going on and get the explanations that I had been wanting since the beginning.
Then I got to the final part of the story where everything was brought together and explained. It wasn’t what I was expecting and was a bit of a letdown. It reminded me of a few movies I’ve seen with similar plots, but I can’t give titles, or it would ruin this book. It did have an uplifting, satisfying ending, but I wish the road to get there was a bit bumpier, scarier, and more thrilling. I wish we got more horror than mystery.
Overall, it was a decent story. It turned out to be more psychological than horror. I am interested in reading more from this author, but I don’t know if I would recommend this book to everyone; maybe to some people.