Thursday, April 23, 2015

ARC REVIEW House of Echoes by Brendan Duffy

House of Echoes is a gothic horror thrill ride. At times it feels like a ghost story or a monster story but one this for sure is it is a creepy story. Brendan Duffy's debut novel, House of Echoes tells a tale of a family needing a new start, writing in such a way you feel a pull a sympathy for them which makes everything that happens make more of an impact. I had been craving a good scare and this satisfied it. I did not want to put this down and I am glad I read it during the day time hours. History plays a big part in the story along with the main storyline with the Tierney Family is an ominous and unsettling journal entries from a young girl in the frontier times when the town of Swannhaven was founded.

Ben and Caroline Tierney needed a new start, for several reasons. Caroline suffers from bipolar disorder and just recently lost her job; Charlie their eight year old son is very cerebral and in his last school the bullies singled him out in moments, it got so bad he ended missing for a whole day only to be found locked in the basement furnace room of the school. I think the only stable one out the whole family is Bub, the baby. Ben is an author, his grandmother just passed and left him and his brother a house in a small village out in upstate New York. When out there scoping out the property he found an old house perfect for the family. The plan was that Caroline and Ben would renovate the house and start up an Inn. Charlie starts acting more withdrawn than normal spending more time outside. Caroline deals with practically doing the work herself, but with her bipolar disorder she always sees things worse than they are. Ben finding out the history of the town and the house he bought feels inspired to write. But odd things almost immediately start happening after they move in and the weird villagers just compound everything. The more Ben discovers about the village and the house the more strange things get.

Overall it is a creepy read, it's a good read; keep the lights on and you'll never look at the woods the same way again.  

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