It’s a home invasion from beyond the grave in this novel of unrelenting terror from the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of PRESSURE, DWELLER, and WOLF HUNT.It doesn’t seem like the perfect house, but screw it, it’s good enough to rent for a year. Unfortunately for Boyd, Adeline, and their two young daughters, it’s immediately clear that they chose the wrong place. The nightmare begins with … nightmare begins with violent coughs and headaches. Food starts to rot almost as soon as they take it inside. A pet tarantula goes missing. Some family members begin to exhibit creepy behavior.
Then the ghosts arrive, and all Hell breaks loose…
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This was my first read by Jeff Strand but I will definitely be reading more! Right from the beginning I was hooked. About halfway through the book, the flow of the story took a different direction, favoring gory, gross, disgusting things happening. In my opinion, it was not a bad direction, just different from the first half, Those gory, gross, disgusting things were very imaginative and well described and kept me wanting to read until the end.
I finished “Sick House” in two days and I enjoyed every single page. There were so many fun twists and turns that, every time I put it down, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and I had to read more and more. The story is so original. I love how the ghosts basically cause the house to rot from within. There are so many elements that I love about this book but I don’t want to give too much away. The ending was awesome. I really thoroughly enjoyed how everything came together in the end. I highly recommend this book. Jeff Strand has become one of new favorite authors.
Jeff Strand is pretty diverse with his books. He writes young adult books, not-quite-rom-com books, fun suspense, fun horror, and of course straight horror. SICK HOUSE is one of his straight horror books. Sure, it has some of his trademark comedy and fun quips in the first half of the book but only enough to help establish the characters. (More on that later.) The bulk of the book is horror, scares, and gore.
The story: the Gardners are a happy family of four. The father Boyd recently got promoted so they had to move to a new house, a larger house where the two daughters can each have their own room. Not everything is happy though. The house starts to have an affect on the Gardner family. A food rotting, hot baths freezing, eye gouging type of affect. And then the ghosts appear.
I liked the story and thought that it was a clever spin on the haunted house story: part poltergeist, part ghost, part more. And Strand really made this story gruesome and gory. The torture that all the characters went through had me cringing and wincing in sympathy pain. However, I found that the Gardner family kind of blended together; it was difficult for me to hear each character’s voice and imagine them. I think the problem for me was that each family member used that trademark humor and that made it hard to see if it was the wife saying it or the teenage daughter. They were too similar. The ghosts though all stood out to me and were different. As always I look forward to more straight horror from Strand. I also look forward to more fun suspense books and fun horror books. Let’s just say that I look forward to more from Strand.
This was not a bad book. It was worth reading
The plot, character development, and story line are on point – until you get to the ending. Then it’s just a disappointment. Still worth reading.
Just okay.
Interesting book. It could have been better had the author developed the tension a bit more, but overall it”s a good read.