What's to like: The general sense of foreboding that is evident in every chapter of this book.
This book has been on my Pinterest for ages, and I couldn't help but feel glad that I came across it by chance at a bookstore. And boy, what a book it is!
We meet Eve, a girl who has been living with her partner Charlie and their adopted dog, Shylo, at 3709 Heritage Lane—an old house that seems to be situated in the middle of the woods, where they have only been living for a few days. They are planning to flip the house, but for now are trying to see what kind of repairs it needs. One day, when Charlie is out for work, a family of five knocks on her door. The father, Thomas Faust, claims to have lived in the house as a child and wants to show his wife and children the home he grew up in. He tells her that they were driving past the place in their moving truck and decided to stop on their way to their new home. Eve, as someone who struggles with anxiety and isn't a very social person, is unable to say no and allows them to come in for 15 minutes.
Thomas introduces Eve to his family—Paige, his devout and God-fearing wife; Kai and Newton, his sons, one a smug brat and the other a shy, glasses-wearing kid; and Jenny, their daughter, who writes down everything her father tells her with a sense of curiosity and clearly looks up to him. As they walk through the house, Eve senses that Thomas is scared to share something that he knows about it. Once their tour of the house is done, Thomas calls out to Jenny, but she is nowhere to be found. He and Eve then go to the basement to search for her, only to find that she has been hiding in a tiny alcove there. Thomas informs Eve that if they give her time, she will come out on her own. To Eve's relief, Charlie comes back home and she no longer has to deal with this family alone. But Charlie doesn't find anything strange about them and even invites them to stay for dinner while they wait for Jenny to come out of her hiding place. After dinner, the family prepares to leave, but there is an alert about a worsening snowstorm, and the bridge that connects them to town has also been damaged because of it. Grudgingly, the family ends up staying the night. But later, when Eve wakes up in the middle of the night, she sees someone standing at the basement stairs—someone she can't quite describe to Charlie.
The whole book has chapters interspersed with documents that corroborate every incident Thomas speaks about from his childhood. These include references to his childhood dog and his “sister,” Alison, who had begun to feel that the house had a life of its own and that everything around her had started to change. The documents also present different theories about what might be happening with the house, including what online conspiracy theorists have to say about it. Every document ends in Morse code that, when decoded and joined together, forms a sentence giving a clue about a character we only briefly meet halfway through the story.
This book made me rethink everything I had read and wonder about the existence of parallel universes—and whether everything was just the trick of one sick being. The author balances the spookiness, scares, and creepiness of the story so well that you feel the chills while reading, but not so much that your curiosity doesn’t keep pushing you to read further.
Favorite line illusion: The unexplainable window swap!
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