The House Next Door by Darcy Coates [book review]

Book: The House Next Door

By: Darcy Coates

Published: March 15, 2017

Publisher: Blackout Books

Pages: 282

Genre: Horror

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. What this means is that if you purchase anything through the links I have provided for you then I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Please consider supporting my blog.

Amazon

About The House Next Door

The House Next Door follows a woman in a pretty nice neighborhood. At least everything else but the house next door to her is nice.

There have been several people that have moved into that home and then moved out within a couple of months to a year later. Why? Because the house is haunted. Everyone in the neighborhood knows about it and they refuse to help. None of them can risk putting their lives in danger.

When someone new moves into the home the haunting seems to get worse. But why would it get worse? Can Jo help the new neighbor escape it before it completely takes her over?

What I thought

The House Next Door is actually my first Darcy Coates book. I know, I know I probably should have gotten to one a whole lot sooner. I’m not sure why I kind of avoided it there for a while. Her being so hyped up probably contributed to that. Due to their tendency to disappoint, I tend to avoid all things hyped. That’s usually the case for me anyways.

The House Next Door follows a woman who lives across the street from a house that is very haunted. Everyone on the street knows about it as well. It doesn’t help that most of the people that move into the home move out within a few months or up to a year after moving in. All of them except but one. The new tenant that moves into the home is on the run from her crazy ex and she refuses to leave.

Despite actually really enjoying The House Next Door there is one thing that irritated me. I won’t go into details because, you know, spoilers. Generally, horror books (and movies) have characters who make stupid decisions. That’s typical. There are a couple of decisions in this book that are just so stupid, and none of them have anything to do with haunting. It was the kind of stupid that makes you mad.

Other than that I actually really enjoyed the book. It was a very well-paced book with a lot of twists and turns that kept you interested throughout. It’s really hard to kind of put a new twist on a ghost story. A lot of ghost stories are way too similar but this one managed to put a nice little twist to it.

Do you enjoy ghost stories?

If you enjoy this review then you may like my Summer Horror book list as well.