House of Echoes by Brendan Duffy

Book: House of Cards: A Novel

Author: Brendan Duffy

Release date (if applicable): Published

Synopsis: Ben Tierney's family has suffered a lot. His wife, Caroline, has lost her big banking job. His son, Charlie, is being bullied at school and Ben, so stressed out, has writer's block. 

When Ben inherits the family estate, The Croft, in upstate New York, he sees it as the new lease on life they need.

Ben was wrong.

My rating: 3 Stars

My opinion: Let me first start off by saying that I was impressed with this debut novel. It was well constructed, particularly for a debut, and it was creepy. So, only 3 stars?

I love horror. Not vampires, werewolves, and zombies horror, because that isn't horror to me. But horror for the things you can't see. Horror that gets into the crevices of your mind and makes you shudder. 

What I found was this book started off that way. In the beginning, I found myself unable to put this book down as I was drawn into occurrences on the estate. However, at some point, I can't say exactly when, the book simply fell off and became a cliched horror novel to me. The same type of occurrences in the mediocre books throughout the genre. I found this to be really sad because this author had shown that it wasn't his earlier pattern in the book. 

Towards the end, I found myself just wanting it to end and not really caring for the characters. In horror books that have garnered higher ratings from me, BAM moments were right up to the last page. 

 I will say that I have a number of friends who have reviewed this book, as well. I have found that those who don't particularly read a large amount of horror absolutely loved it. They gave it 4/5 stars. Those of us who do read a large amount of horror stayed in the 3/3.5 range. You be the judge. 

Source: Publisher for review through Netgalley/Library (print version)

Would I recommend? : Yes 


Stand Alone or Part of a Series: Stand Alone