Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Two Spooky Reads: Diary of a Haunting and Strangers on a Train


                                     

(Read #1 for the Halloween Read-A-Thon)

This is a creepy book that definitely lives up to its incredibly creepy cover.

I love books that are the equivalent of "found footage". In this case, it is an online journal, photographs, old pamphlets, and letters. 

Our main source of information is Paige, the teenage daughter of the family who has moved into the mysterious home. She begins to keep an online journal of what is occurring in the house, from spider and fly infestations, to disappearing and duplicated food. Her brother Logan isn't sleeping, and her mother dismisses everything offhand as spirits simply expressing themselves.

The downstairs neighbor, Raph, begins to provide Paige and her new friend, Chloe, with more information about who and what lived in the home previously, leading Paige on a desperate hunt to figure out what is going on and stop it before it gets any worse.

This book is really creepy. As someone with a fear of spiders, those sections were especially skin crawling for me. The tension builds and builds, until the terrifying ending, that comes with a shocking scary twist.


Guy meets Bruno on a train, and finds himself confiding in the stranger about his troubles with his hopefully soon to be ex-wife. Bruno explains that he has issues with his father, and suggests a pact to commit the perfect murder--Bruno will murder Guy's wife, and Guy will kill Bruno's father. No one will ever know there was a connection between them.

This is a really excellent, suspenseful presence, and one that works very well in a two hour movie, but unfortunately dragged some within this novel. Guy's agonies, Bruno's desperation, all became a bit repetitive as they continued chapter to chapter. 

This is still a good read, but not quite as suspenseful as I had hoped, particularly given how much I enjoyed the movie, and Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley. 



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