I have never done a review on GoodReads before, but I believe this book merits it...

This is the worst book I have ever read. I'm not just saying that because I disagree with the themes that this story was based on; it was written badly. It was 3rd grade-level bad. It reminded me that any book in the Goosebumps series would be a welcoming divergence, and I'm not exaggerating. Whenever a story has magic or supernatural forces, it needs to have rules so that there is clarity in what is happening throughout it. This book kept changing rules on the reader so frequently and in a less-than-surprising way, that any inconsistencies in supernatural thematic elements couldn't be overlooked because so much came at the reader from out of the blue.

Further negative points:

This 'Tin Man' killer's 3 rules that this book is supposedly based on is really 1 and 1/2 rules. The first rule is "God came to my house and I killed him." That isn't a rule, but a statement that is never brought up later at any point. Also the 3rd rule is merely an amendment to a certain condition of the second rule.

The 'heroes' of this book are told to kill each other by this Tin Man, so what do they do? Discuss killing or not killing each other, rather than discussing the idea of killing this Tin Man. It was like these 4 people tended to do as they were told from the beginning of the book.

Does anyone remember when Stephanie, Jack, Leslie and Randy are talking about Betty, Stewart and Pete existing as inbreeds? I do. I remember a couple offhand remarks during their discussions of their uneasiness with that family. I also remember that it wasn't actually known if they did inbreed, but the author seemed to take his characters' word for it. Like the author fooled himself into believing gossip that he wrote. That REALLY drove me crazy, like I was listening to a drunk friend lie to me.

Gypsies or Roma don't draw pentagrams all over the walls.

The Gypsy mirror was a useless prop. It didn't do anything, other than to exist to be weird. That was really superficial, and it irritated me that everyone seemed to know that mirrors like this are trick mirrors from Gypsy circuses like it is common knowledge. Peretti (or Decker I guess?) really drug Gypsies (Roma) through the mud. I call racism.

This is a short list of tiny tidbits of things I have learned by reading this book:

1. Good people have good manners, and bad people have bad manners.
2. Women hate each other.
3. Women can't do anything on their own. They always need men. Men tend not to need help from women.
4. I don't care what happens to the main characters.
5. Women have feelings. Men know how to get things done.

This book was like watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 without the commentary, so you have to make up your own. It is worth reading for a laugh only when you're in a good mood. I would give more of a plot summary, but the again: what plot? Okay, here goes-->

Four people are stuck in a house that belongs to a family of three stereotypes that the author attempts to superficially convince the reader are bad people. And they are Gypsies. Alert the authorities. A killer named 'Tin Man' traps everyone in this house and we are told that this point in the book is a psychological game of wits, good versus evil, and women making mistakes. People run around, argue, fight, rules get changed back and forth for seemingly no reason other than to keep the story running until page 372, and also there is a vague girl named Susan who is decidedly good and saves the day by saying something along the lines of "listen to your heart, and be good." The two people that we are supposed to like come out alive, so it is a happy ending. We are also supposed to like this Susan character, but she sacrifices herself so that the plot doesn't completely conform to a Lifetime movie storyboard.

That's it. Don't read it. I would give it minus eight stars if I could, but the lowest is one.

Didn’t love it, lands between 1-2 for me. I was a big fan of Ted Dekker's Three, and someone on Reddit hyped up House as being even better. Welp, guess my experience was totally different!
The idea at the start was cool, but the middle of this book just got all tangled up and confusing. On top of that, I just couldn’t connect with any of the characters and honestly kept mixing them up .
Maybe because it’s a collab with another author, but this one just didn't have that same Dekker magic as Three for me.

I got about 1/2 way through this book and it just got too weird--even for me! So I decided not to finish it--too many good ones on my TBR to struggle through something I really didn't like--so shelved probably for good!!

Just plain awful. Two couples get stranded in a haunted hotel in backwoods Alabama. Why? Who knows. Who cares. I hated every single character, there was no plot, it wasn't scary and it turned into a Christian moral that made no sense.

Ugh!!! When it first started, there was potential. Toward the middle, boring. I continued reading hoping it would get better. Then it got very weird...hard to follow...and still boring. The story line made zero sense and then the end became religious?!? I couldn’t wait to be finished so I could donate it...

I want to start this off by acknowledging all of the previous reviews of this. I’ve seen a lot of “badly written” and “didn’t make sense” and “no point”. Well, I strongly beg to differ.

A friend of mine recommended this one to me and in January and I just now got around to reading it. And WOW. Frank Peretti has done it yet again. I don’t read this author because of the thrill alone, I read him because of his spiritual depth.

It’s unbelievable how the strange, exotic and even weird experiences are comparable and connected to things in my life! It shows how even the hardest heart is turned toward God when it’s their last resort. Honestly, people can claim atheism and evolution and whatever they want to believe but when it comes down to it they all know in their heart that there is indeed a God and that they have to be accountable to him.

I really wish I could unveil the secrets of HOUSE for you but I’d hate to give it away! Any Christian should read this. It’s absolutely unbelievable the way he reveals what the Bible says is so deceitful. The Heart.

**EDIT: please, please share this review if you see it. The top reviews of this book are negative. It deserves way more positivity than its getting!!

Interesting premise, poor execution. Characters are very flat, basic cliches with little to no depth, and the religious metaphor was so heavy handed and obvious it made the characters seem infuriatingly slow and the plot very predictable.

I picked this book up from the library, thumbed through a few pages, and decided to preview it by reading the first chapter. I had other books I thought I should get through first, before I could start another. So I previewed it.

Fifteen chapters later, I had to put the book down because it was getting late.

House is an amazing thriller about survival through not just this world, but the next. It's really one of the few books that actually had my mind running.

An excellent book by far. I recommend it to the reader who enjoys and anticipates the fear of what might be around the corner, what might be happening, and who you can trust.

Oh dear god. I have way too many complaints with this book. I don't even know where to begin. First of all, I--yet again--see the horrific embodiment of sin that must be defeated by confessing ones own sin. Please, I know we're trying to be symbolic here; but I'm sure these authors are more creative than that. Nothing stinks more to me than forced symbolism. I mean, come on, how anti-climactic must you be? You pray and BAM you're saved. I...I just don't think it works like that...ever. Second, I just can't believe that line "Randy swore loudly." Or something to that effect. Ohmygoodness. It doesn't matter if you are avoiding profanity or not, I can tell you this much that does not sound good in a novel. It would have been better to just leave it out entirely instead of trying to censor the words of some character in one's own story. I would certainly not recommend this book to anyone just because I as a reader cannot handle the recycled plot and the poor attempts at sinister plot twists.

I wish I had never given this novel a chance. I don't even know how I managed to finish it. There was so much wrong with the story that I don't even know where to start. The characters were terribly developed and played a stereotypical role. There was the hot-headed man, and the rational man, and two women who were meant to act like complete idiots, with no shred of independence. I think what bothered me the most was how the women were depicted in this novel. The authors used one character's "psyche" and showed that underneath it all "[she] was a whore". That enraged me to no end. Why does she have to be portrayed in that way? Is that all a woman is meant to be in a horror story? And how dare you use psychology in that way? So, every rational and logical woman who works in the field of psychiatry actually has sexual issues and is a depraved whore on the inside?! Oh, and the other woman is the one who has to take the heat for a failed marriage and a family tragedy? And on top of it, she needs to be completely useless?! To make matters worse, the story kept going around in circles, and there was the sudden introduction of another character, who I actually liked and I wish she had had more to her character. And then this story becomes all about sin and goodness and the battle between darkness and light. And now it is suddenly a Christian story. Now, I had not known that the authors write Christian fiction, and to be quite honest, I don't necessarily care because I will read anything and everything and have no bias towards it. But seriously?! It just took an already ridiculous story to a whole new level of crazy. And not in a good way. I could go on and on about every single thing that I disliked about this novel, but I don't want to waste any more time or energy on it. Just ... don't read it. Seriously. Don't read it.

the way the characters interacted with each other was nonsensical. from the very beginning, people who didn't know each other would just automatically be passive aggressive a-holes. I made it 130 dull pages in and then quit

Just cannot do this one! I'm Quitting at 48%. It's depressing, disturbing, it makes me anxious and annoyed. I should have quit at the scene where the "good" guys were in the meat locker with the crazy inbreds, but no, I was sure it would get less nuts. The dog food scene was worse! It's like a mixture of the movie Deliverance and the book House of Leaves. Both are messed up on their own, but combining them