Ooh ya’ll I’m always down for a haunted house book but one this unique and atmospheric is always a treat! I heavily enjoyed the abundance of characters and the dynamics that they upheld throughout the story. The fact that the family was untraditional but close knit made the story far more interesting. One of my favorite aspects of the novel is that every character tries to convince themselves and others that nothing is going on and that it’s a collective hallucination/fever dream/etc. This made the events feel far more real and made them scarier when they did occur. Speaking of events…while they were climactic and got scarier as the book progressed, I loved that they were sporadic and more haunting than directly and consistently menacing as most horror books are. Normally I do not like when you don’t find out exactly what the root cause of an issue is in a book as it feels unfinished and lazy. With this story, it only added to the allure. The horror and gore elements depicted were perfectly timed and the fact that up until the ending most of the events took place during the day made it all the more unsettling. I’m aware I’m far behind as this book debuted in the early 80’s but this has made me SO excited to dig into more of McDowell’s works.