Within These Walls

Not the best thing I've ever read. But not the worst, by far. I enjoyed this novel. It has a more literary sensibility than some genre offerings. There are some time line inconsistencies, and that makes trying to decipher people's ages wonky. And yes, the characters are frustrating, in particular Lucas and his daughter. But on the whole, for my first foray into cult horror, I gotta say that I enjoyed it. Rarely was a I bored. The misogyny infuriated me and creeped me out. The ghosty bits get confusing, as does the reasoning behind every overarching plan that Jeffrey Halcomb makes. Once could say the same about some enjoyable anime. Whatever.

It reminded me of Sinister (which I love). But trade Bughuul for a creepy Manson-esque cult leader. Essentially, failing true-crime writer Lucas Graham moves his daughter out to the Pacific Northwest for the summer, ostensibly to write a book about a cult leader who refuses to give interviews, a bloke named Jeffrey Halcomb. Halcomb actually reaches out to him, sends him a letter, and promises to allow Lucas to interview him if Lucas lives in the house where Halcomb lived in 1983. The house where eight of his followers committed suicide one day, where he murdered a senator's daughter and her baby, during some sort of ritual.

And because he is desperate, with a flagging career and failing marriage, Lucas does it. Whilst the wife is in Italy on a business trip with her probable affair, Lucas drags his emo tween daughter to Washington State to work on a book that he hopes will revive his career and save his marriage.

And then the excrement hits the air conditioning, and weirdness happens.

The weirdness often creeped me out, but not as much as the cult's interactions with each other and the world did. That being said, I couldn't quite buy into Lucas' daughter's obsession with Halcomb. She wasn't the worst kid in horror I've read, and I suppose the ghosts worked their mojo on her. But there was something in the way she and Lucas interacted that frustrated me, that didn't quite ring true. Or maybe I'm just not into the trope of the moody emo teen. It's the trope that irks me, not the actual emo kids.

This could have been edited down, sure; but it's not all that long a read, and it held my attention sufficiently that I was never bored. So, yeah, I had fun. It creeped me out. A solid three-star tale.