The Dead House
Author: Dawn Kurtagich (Who, is awesome, just saying.)
Publication Date: August 6th, 2015
Publisher: Orion Children's Books
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~
Part-psychological thriller, part-urban legend, this is an unsettling narrative made up of diary entries, interview transcripts, film footage transcripts and medical notes. Twenty-five years ago, Elmbridge High burned down. Three people were killed and one pupil, Carly Johnson, disappeared. Now a diary has been found in the ruins of the school. The diary belongs to Kaitlyn Johnson, Carly’s identical twin sister. But Carly didn’t have a twin . . .
Re-opened police records, psychiatric reports, transcripts of video footage and fragments of diary reveal a web of deceit and intrigue, violence and murder, raising a whole lot more questions than it answers.
Who was Kaitlyn and why did she only appear at night? Did she really exist or was she a figment of a disturbed mind? What were the illicit rituals taking place at the school? And just what did happen at Elmbridge in the events leading up to ‘the Johnson Incident’?
Chilling, creepy and utterly compelling, THE DEAD HOUSE is one of those very special books that finds all the dark places in your imagination, and haunts you long after you've finished reading.
You guys know I love Psychological Thrillers and Horror,
right? So having The Dead House as part Psychological Thriller and Horror? The
Dead House couldn't get any more of a me book,
and it was one hell of a crazy ride, and
honesty? Fucking whoa. That's pretty much what I was thinking the whole way
through it.
Two words to appropriately sum up The Dead House (that isn't
holy shit, because holy shit.) is psychologically disturbing. I'll get
my issue out of the way because I only have one problem with it, and starting
it, I thought that it would have been the format of how the story is told, but
it wasn't. And it wasn't having a connection, like my major issue in books are,
but it wasn't that either (not that I had a connection, because really, I don't
expect it with the genre, especially because you can't trust any character. And
I mean, any character. My main issues
is that I felt two completely different things about the first half and the
second half.
