House of Echoes in 2017 Reading Challenge

Mar 31, 2015 Jenn rated it it was ok

Shelves: netgalley

It's a shame, this book. I read the blurb and it immediately interested me, but you never know what you are going to get with these "family tries to grow closer after a traumatic event so they go to a more solitary location" type stories. The writing, while solid, seemed to focus mostly on the details of the locations and surroundings rather than the characters and their relationships, which ultimately bored me.

The novel focuses on Ben, an author struggling to find the inspiration with his lates It's a shame, this book. I read the blurb and it immediately interested me, but you never know what you are going to get with these "family tries to grow closer after a traumatic event so they go to a more solitary location" type stories. The writing, while solid, seemed to focus mostly on the details of the locations and surroundings rather than the characters and their relationships, which ultimately bored me.

The novel focuses on Ben, an author struggling to find the inspiration with his latest novel, trying to appease his wife, Caroline, who is desperate to maintain some semblance of control after losing her job and being recently diagnosed bi-polar, their eight-year-old child, Charlie, who was bullied at his last school in Manhattan, their second child "Bub" and the family dog.

After Ben's grandmother's death, he inherits a large estate in a smaller, supposedly peaceful town where they hope to turn the house and land into a Bed & Breakfast Inn. Gradually creepier and stranger occurrences happen to the family in their new home, and of course, not everything, or everyone, is as it seems.

While this set-up isn't frankly new, it definitely has all the pieces there. But one wonders will this be another The Shining, or maybe The Hills Have Eyes, or maybe Haunted Mansion. The thing is I'm not really even sure what this gothic style mystery was trying to accomplish because I got bogged down in the painfully slow pacing. I mean it just dragged itself along. So many extraneous details about the house, the land, the past, the present, and let's not forgot the 254367 meals Caroline cooks. Yes, there were parts that built tension such as Charlie's times in the woods and the feeling of being watched and having a mysterious friend, but then it would go back to something mundane with the family and the storyline lost focus.

Furthermore, the novel at times felt discombobulated as there is a bit of a campfire tale aspect with letters from 1777 interspersed between chapters, and then there is the family -- Ben, Caroline, and Charlie (sorry, Bub, you couldn't do much), who seems to spend much of the novel apart. They all had their own POVs, but the only one I got a sense of was Ben. There are countless characters, both from the past such as family members and in the present with the strange-acting villagers, and I had trouble at times remembering who was who or trying to figure out if they mattered or furthered the plot. And while the letters do affect the plot, I don't know if they were used throughout the story in a way that felt memorable.

Towards the end the paranoia and tension build to a predictable, but fairly satisfying conclusion with not much that really scared me.

The writing and author have potential, but the storytelling is too busy and yet slow (ha...) for my tastes.

*I received an advance copy of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*
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