Pervasive dread.

27. No One Gets Out Alive – Adam Nevill

Stephanie’s circumstances are bad and only getting worse. She takes a room on Edgehill Road because it is theoretically cheap enough, even if it comes with a super creepy landlord named Knacker, of all things, and she doesn’t realize the whole “women only” part of the house is an omen of bad things to come, not a safety thing. The other women who live there seem to have a certain profession that maybe benefits Knacker, perhaps, and the ones who cry all night seem to either disappear or…not really be living there in the first place, emphasis on “living.” It’s like Stephanie can hear someone who ended up in a worse situation than she did and because she’s desperate, not stupid, she’s making her best efforts to get out. Knacker and his boy Fergal, will, of course, make that as impossible as possible.

This one reeks with desperation, damp, despair, probably more D-words. Determination. Stephanie is in a bad way financially, but that doesn’t take away her determination to either figure this out or escape, preferably both, even though all help she might get from the outside is really cut off. And there are such seriously disgusting men in front of her trying to push her into becoming a prostitute. It’s hard knowing better and still being stuck, this book really pushes that at the reader and it’s so creepy in that house on its own. The whole house sounds disgusting and like you’d get tetanus living there in seconds. Plus there are upset ghosts who are crying all night. I mean, seriously, when this is the best you can do you know you’re well and truly screwed. She doesn’t even stay 10 days and it feels like for-ev-er. Nevill is really, really good at making the reader feel the atmosphere and it’s so depressing that when it gets more ghosty and also dark in the literal sense, it’s way scarier.

 

You know who had the exact opposite situation of this book? Merricat. She went from whoever let her go to the humane society to being in charge of my entire household. She was determined to be queen and she made it.