Sunday 11 October 2015

Review: The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich.



Book: The Dead House 

Author: Dawn Kurtagich 

Pages: 440 

How Long it Took Me To Read: 2 days 

Read On: iPad 

Plot Summary: 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.

General Thoughts: I heard about this book when it first came out and I was all kinds of hooked. The mere mention of DID makes my psych-major-heart flutter with joy. DID- Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as MPD- Multiple Personality Disorder is one of my favourite things I've ever had the good fortune to study and it is something I find so insanely (no pun intended) interesting! 

Things I Liked: 

1. Like I said the premise and the promise of DID just had me at Hello! :)

2. I liked the setting- a boarding school in England is some of my favourite things ever to read about.

3. The Carly/Kaitlyn mystery was a good one. Also I liked that the author managed to make the two girls/selves sound different from each other. Well done!

4. The book, to some extent, lets you- the reader- decide for yourself if you believe that the events that transpired are a result of the supernatural or a workings of mentally ill girl. I like that..personally as a psych-major, I am more likely to see the mental illness as a culprit and ignore the supernatural forces.

5. The past events, the accident that caused the deaths of the parents of Carly/Kaitlyn is a bit of mystery and that has apparently caused the 'split', it was to have an additional mystery to ponder over in the book.

6. The book is set 25 years in the past, so the books ends with telling us what happened to the remaining characters and how they got on and what they are upto. I sometimes like when books tell us the fate of characters.

Things I Didn't Like: 

Oh Boy!

1. None of the big twists in this book were particularly surprising. I saw pretty much every single one of them coming and I have a feeling most other readers would too.

2. I get it that Kaitlyn is mentally unstable and disturbed but some of her bits, her writings were just too chaotic and messy to read...it felt like a chore reading through those bits.

3. The book uses pictures and screen shots of videos to advance and add to the story....a gimmick a lot of books have used and some of them have used well--- Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Asylum and Night Film...but this book just didn't get it right. The pictures just didn't really add to the story at all!

4. The book was wayyyyyyyy too long and it could have done with some sharper editing.

5. The second half of the book was slow, and too full of dark magic and it just wasn't my interest at all.

6. The group of friends in the book seemed very un-organic to me. Their friendship and it's intensity seemed a little fake. It came out of nowhere.

7. The book by the end most certainly took a stand...mental illness Vs. supernatural and it would have been nicer if the reader were allowed to make their own minds. The book definitely leaned towards the magical/dark/scary/supernatural side of things.

Rating: 2.5/5

I didn't hate this book, but it was a definitely a disappointment. I had some high hopes but they weren't met. :(




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