This is the first straight-up, modern, mass market horror book I've read in years. It scared me, but not in a thinking person's land of shivers, more like a knee-jerk, maybe I don't want to read about this, reactionary way. I felt super uneasy the whole time I was reading it, and it isn't an experience I want to repeat anytime soon.
It's your basic poltergeist/ghost/bad energy-type haunting. Weird stuff starts happening, the family is compelled to do things against their will, and most disturbingly, a good amount of psycho sexual bits that creeped me out; I would have preferred the author go easy on the freaky sex aspect, and concentrate on something else.
The family is fairly generic, Bentley Little didn't spend a lot of time building his characters, and as soon as the bad stuff starts to happen, it's just like, "Why don't you people freaking LEAVE?" The justifications for not leaving weren't good, especially considering the mom is a lawyer, and there was a legal loophole they could have used. It gets a little ridiculous after they have a party and a ghost walks through the room, and all the party-goers see it, yet they continue to stay. You'd think an author would know when they've gone past the point of any logical reason for people to remain in their house.
It was compelling enough, even with the blatant "are you kidding?" moments, and I wanted to know what happened, so I read through to the end, but there is better horror out there, and I like my spooky stories gothic, old-fashioned, and/or smarter. The ending was lame, but there weren't many options, he wrote himself into a corner.
I used to read this kind of horror as a teen, and felt like visiting a sleep with the lights on story, but I don't know if this just isn't my kind of genre any longer, or if it was the writing. The experience felt cheap, like fill-in-the-blanks horror, and I was not a fan of the sexually tinged frights aimed at the tween daughter. I couldn't shake those off as anything but unpleasant molestation fantasies from the author, because why go there? Who wants to read that? (It was equally as gross as the kinky/creepy stuff with the adults, as I mentioned ).
Perhaps his earlier work is better. I know a lot of genre writers get stuck, but I doubt I'll be re-visiting his work, so it's unlikely I'll ever know.