3.75 stars

Amazing... never before had i felt so linked to a character. The very beggining is quite boring, but after your reach the 5th chapter you cannot stop reading. It's absolutely thrilling and the way the story is developed, the plot twist near the end (believe me, you don't see that coming) is just spectacular.
I highly recomend this book to people with dark moods, for the main character, Matt, is always either depressed, anxious, or mad.
I warn you not to read the whole book at once, for it turns a bit depressing and might alte your mood.

"A pair of eyes pierced the darkness, seeming to hang suspended in the blackness, fixing on him with an intensity that made his skin crawl"

This is the book you want to be reading on Halloween night. This story is as close as it gets to actual terror.

A mysterious fire burns the house of Matt Moore's grandmother forcing her to move in with the family.

His grandmother, Emily, suffers from dementia and is persistent on recreating the bedroom of Cynthia her favourite daughter who has long since passed.

Throughout the characters feel as though eyes are watching them, the house constantly fills with the perfume of Cynthia but the most frightening of all is the grip it holds on them and the nightmares that ensue.

Rating: 4/5.

The author does a fantastic job of creating of creating a plausible story that could happen to anyone that will give you mighty for weeks wondering what if after the end has been resolved. Having grown up in a haunted house and seeing my own ghosts, this particular book will give me some some sleepless nights. Enjoy!

Found this book hard to get into for a John Saul book. The typical narrative for a John Saul book typically is something that centralizes on the children in the book....which is the same for this book but I found myself ready to give up the book before understanding what was going on. This book needed something to capture my interest early and keep it longer.

This book is good I'm finally getting a understanding of it. It is a little weird waiting on it get scarier. I would recommend it to anyone.

Schaduwen uit het verleden door John Saul

It took me awhile to get into this book but my half through I was hooked

.

I thought this was interesting.
Actually what's an interesting story is I stopped for a while because I got bored and almost a year alter, I continued and I still remember what happened. That's interesting, huh?
Once I jumped back into it, it wasn't boring anymore.
There's the part where the the father got shot, people were accusing the boy, I don't remember if he did it. Then there's the boy hearing his dead aunt when in the end it was his grandma??? or was it his mom. Either way, the person had a dissociate identity disorder or something (formerly known as multiple or split personality disorder). I read a lot of books about that as well.

I've read a couple of Saul's books in the past. I really enjoyed "The Manhattan Hunt Club" and thought "The Presence" was enjoyable enuff that I'd pick up another one, but *this* ... with themes gathering around child abuse, incest, schizophrenia and Alzheimer's, this one just missed the mark this for me. Luckily it was a short read. I doubt I'll try this author again.

Well what to say about this book......sigh.

I am going to have to put it down and that is super rare for me not to finish a book by author, John Saul. I have read a lot of his books and usually give his work high ratings as I love his stories, but this book was just super slow with lots of repetition with things happening to the characters. The same things would happen and it just went out like that for most of the book as I did read up to about halfway. I also did not find the story to be that spooky - I was not scared out of my wits like I normally am with ghost stories written by this author.

The other reason I am laying it down as there is quite a bit of emotions with one of the characters that has Alzheimer's as that rings too close to home for me as I was my mother's caretaker up till she passed away as she had Alzheimer's and everything that happens in this story with that character just brings back too much of what I went through with my mom. It was heartbreaking to see my mom go through that and to read a story about it just brings all that heartache back, so I just cannot read this book as it is very emotional for me.

I am not rating this book as I do not rate books I do not finish.