There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins
Published: September 26th 2017 by Dutton Books for Young Readers
Scream meets YA in this hotly-anticipated new novel from the bestselling author of Anna and the French Kiss.
One-by-one, the students of Osborne High are dying in a series of gruesome murders, each with increasing and grotesque flair. As the terror grows closer and the hunt intensifies for the killer, the dark secrets among them must finally be confronted.
International bestselling author Stephanie Perkins returns with a fresh take on the classic teen slasher story that’s fun, quick-witted, and completely impossible to put down.
I absolutely loved the Anna and the French Kiss series. So, when I heard that this author was going to be tackling a horror story, I was excited to see how it was going to pan out, but at the same time, I was worried about it not being very good because the author is an amazing romance writer. Whilst I enjoyed the concept and aspects of this book, I felt like there were certain things that let it down in a huge way.
The books starts off relatively creepy. The start of this book definitely had me hooked because it was the beginning of the slayings and it got right to the mystery of things. I loved the way the scene was set up with the egg timer and the way in which the character was thinking about it because it gave it that creepy factor that I think a book like this needs.
However, having said that, I feel like this book went off on a tangent after that first hooking chapter. To me, it felt extremely unrealistic because a classmate had just been brutally murdered and mutilated, but our MC was focusing on her love life. I feel like the romance aspect of this book played too much of a role and it took away from the murder mystery aspect of this book. It dragged in certain places and I feel like the MC should have been more concerned about what was going on in the bigger picture rather than focusing on her and what her relationship was with Ollie.
The murder aspect of this book was extremely interesting. I loved the way in which the scenes were written from the victims’ perspectives and we read exactly what happened to them. The author definitely didn’t hold back on the way in which the murders were carried out – to the point in which I sent a snippet of a murder through to my brother because it was pretty gruesome. I do feel like we needed more of the psychology behind the murderer’s actions and why he did the things he did before committing the murder.
I would have also liked to have known more about the murderer as a whole by the end of the book. I felt like his identity was lacking and the reasoning behind it was very well thought out or fleshed out as a whole. I was actually confused as to who the murderer was because we had read very little about him and he seemed like the unlikely choice. I felt like things with him were definitely rushed toward the end of the book and I also feel like certain things would not have happened because he would have gone down sooner considering the description we are given about his appearance.
I was also pretty disappointed about the big reveal of our MC’s past and just why she was sent to Osbourne to begin with – I don’t feel like it was particularly shocking enough and it was rather anti climatic after that way in which it is described as a secret that has to stay secret throughout the book.
Overall, whilst I enjoyed certain aspects of this book, there were others that I was relatively disappointed in. The ending was rushed and not fleshed out enough and I feel like our MC needed to sort her priorities out! I gave this a 3/5 stars.
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