Some mixed feelings on this one, so let's get the cons out of the way first;

At times the plot felt a little predictable and run-of-the-mill, often feeling like the writer had leaned too heavily on certain tropes of expected horror plot beats to procure the narrative.
Overall this certainly didn't ruin my experience, but these are criticisms worth mentioning that I felt did detract from the atmosphere at times.

Now for the bits I enjoyed;
First of all, there are some instances of animal mutilation which are gory and recorded in vivid detail, and while for some that may be stomach-churning, I found the descriptions horrifying in the right way. My experience with the voodoo and cultic practises was similarly one of morbid fascination and whilst it is entirely valid for some readers to be upset by these, I personally found them nothing by beneficial to the story.
Throughout the narrative, John Saul maintains an air of dread and whilst I feel it took its time to get going, I do feel this greatly helped to build tension and an atmosphere of just... evil. All of this combined with well-worded prose and I found myself engulfed by the tale. As a fellow writer, I have a great deal of appreciation for Saul's craft as a wordsmith.

Overall, the positives significantly outweigh the negatives, but despite that the flaws can be distracting at times. Perhaps deserving of a little more than four stars, but I can only input integer numbers of stars so... four it is!

I liked the concept of the book. However, the execution wasn't as tidy as it could have been. There were a lot of strings that were left loose. Several of the characters had changes that were abruptly reversed without any attempt of explanation. The end would have been better with an epilogue that perhaps undid some of the endings resolution. It was a good read but not Saul's best work.

As a John Saul fan this book was just okay for me. A word of warning…. It contains animal cruelty and mutilation which was hard to read. It was different from his earlier books which are favorites of mine… Suffer the Children and Comes the Blind Fury. Although this wasn’t a favorite I will continue to read any of his books that I’ve not read yet.

This is one of the worst horror tropes there is! This is NOT a haunted house book; if I’d known what it was actually about, I wouldn’t have read it. And it’s built out of horror clichés, at that! Truly, how many dream sequences do we need? At least he put his dog on a leash and didn’t just open the door and let the barking thing run off into the woods … so I guess he missed ONE chiché. John Saul’s books are easy reads so, as bad as it was, it went quickly down the hatch.

So, it's been a while since I have reviewed any books on here, mainly because it's been awhile since I actually finished reading a book. John Saul did an amazing job of bringing imagery horror to light with this novel. Grasping it from all aspects so that one could really indulge themselves in the story line, growing to like and dislike certain characters, and even at some points be frightened of other characters inpspite of the fact you know they aren't real. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a good horror/suspence read.

Great read. Really intense scary moments. Very gory. Very descriptive.

3.5, but on the lower end so giving 3 stars on the Goodreads rating. This kept me entertained and I didn't get bored reading; however, it wasn't as scary as I had expected and parts of it were bordering on, if not just outright, too ridiculous even for a paranormal horror story.

I did get some The Shining vibes from this book. The dad/husband is an alcoholic. The family inherits a big house that he plans to make into an inn but because of his alcoholism he has to in a sense face his demons, but does he overcome his demons or submit to them? You'll have to read the book to find out ;)

WARNING: There is some disturbing subject matter in this book that some may find too upsetting to read about. I don't feel qualified to list all potential trigger warnings, so if you are someone who needs them, do your research before picking this up.

I refuse to give anything half stars because they’re for cowards but this should really be a 3.5 or so.

The thing about John Saul is if he adds a pet to a book it’s gonna die. If he adds a kid your odds are 50/50 it’ll die. You have to be resigned to that.

All in all this is a pretty classic story: Loser dad moves family to clearly cursed house being all “This will be good for us!!!” There’s some voodoo, Catholics being right (I know I’m shocked too), some weird twin shit, and lots of dream sequences. One might argue too many dream sequences.

I do wish the characters had some more nuance and maybe the atmosphere had been given more room to... be atmospheric instead of writing lots of dream sequences like this! Because when you see lots of exclamation points you know it’s a super scary thing! I’m so spooked! I also wish there had been fewer POV characters? I feel like more mystery could have made this a lot more intense.

All in all not bad.

The only horror in this book was that it was so badly written.

İlk defa korku türünde bir roman okudum. Açıkçası beni pek içine çektiğini söyleyemem. Gerilim ve korkuyu hiç hissedemedim. Sadece ucuz bir Amerikan korku filmi izliyormuşum hissi verdi. Hayvana ve çocuğa şiddet içeren bölümler vardı. Bu kısımları okurken korku ve gerilimden çok iğrenme duygusunu hissettim. Korku ve gerilimi, hayvana ve çocuğa yönelik şiddeti bu kadar detaylı anlatmadan da verebilirdi. Bu sahneleri okurken fazlasıyla rahatsız oldum.

Sonu da tatmin edici değildi. Her şey çok hızlı bir şekilde sonuçlandı. Okuduğum diğer incelemelerde, yazarın diğer kitaplarının da benzer konuları işlediğini gördüm. Saul’a ait başka bir kitabı okuyacağımı sanmıyorum.

So good I finished it in three days

Loved it

Great if you're looking for a throwback, classic tale of evil that only came out of the 80s and 90s.