Shelf Indulgence

I read this book while I was on vacation this past week. I'm surprised that I wasn't able to get more reading done, since I had nothing pressing to do during this week, but the story was slow-going and not very engaging. Usually, when I go on vacation, I can knock out at least a book a day, but not this time. Shoot, I got less reading done this week than I do when I'm working full-time hours.

The House is about five people who each grew up in a house where strange things happened, and where members of their family died. Each of these people also had a caretaker with a daughter who tried to seduce them when they were younger, both sexually and through violence. Now grown up, those five people have to return to the house where they grew up to deal with the evil of the daughter and learn the secret of the places where they lived.

I had a hard time getting any sense of where this story was going. It opened with a prologue that featured four different people, none of whom featured in the main story. Once the main story did get underway, Little introduced five more characters, and then jumped between each of them as the narrative took shape. It became clear that they were tied together by a house and its otherworldly inhabitants, but by the time they all finally connected, half of the book was over. Each of the five main characters experience the same sorts of things once they return to their homes, and Little jumps from one character to another, telling the whole story through different characters. It didn't feel very organic, and I couldn't help but feel like he could have structured the story differently and had it work better.

I'm going to take a break from Bentley Little after this book. He has his moments in each book, but the stories feel very thin and inconsequential when I reach the end. I'll still recommend The Mailman to anyone looking for a good, solid horror novel, but the rest of his stuff just feels disjointed, especially The House. I'm not sure I would rank this book as low as I did The Ignored, but I wouldn't rank it much higher, either. It was just all together disappointing.