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[The Other Child] by Joanne Fluke
5★’s
From The Book:
Where Innocence Dies. . .
Expectant parents Karen and Mike Houston are excited about restoring their old rambling Victorian mansion to its former glory. With its endless maze of rooms, hallways, and hiding places, it's a wonderful place for their nine-year-old daughter Leslie to play and explore. Unfortunately, they didn't listen to the stories about the house's dark history. They didn't believe the rumors about the evil that lived there.
. . .The Nightmare Begins.
It begins with a whisper…. a child's voice beckoning from the rose garden…. crying out in the night. It lures little Leslie to a crumbling storm door and down a flight of broken stairs. It calls to their unborn child. It wants something from each of them….something in their very hearts and souls. Tonight, the house will reveal its secret. Tonight, the other child will come out to play.
My Thoughts:
A small boy huddled in the dark. His mother had promised she would never leave him… not in this awful house… not in this evil town. She was dead and gone and he was alone….accidentally trapped in the root cellar with no one to answer his call or hear his final cry. One hundred years later he has found he has company…a playmate… and best of all…a mother. You almost knew from the time the Houston’s bought the old house what was going to happen but you just had to continue reading. In the beginning the little ghost seemed to be friendly and just lonely but it didn’t take very long before you knew that the time he had spent alone dying in the root cellar and calling for is lost mother, had changed him. From that point on the entire family was doomed in their own way and for individual reasons.
I love a good ghost story. I had only been familiar with Joanne Fluke as a cozy mystery writer. The Other Child is a well done mystery/horror/ghost story that is guaranteed to produce mega goose bumps and is anything but cozy. The story reminds me of the works of John Saul who writes some of the best ghostly horror I have ever read. I see she has a few other books in this vein that I will have to check out very soon. I recommend it to all ghost story lovers.
