I’ve heard numerous times, from multiple sources, that this is one of the scariest books you can possibly get your hands on.  It had been on my radar for years, and finally, I decided it was time to dive in.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but this was just underwhelming to me.  

In my opinion, there is a horrific and effective way to frame a possession story- and this book just completely missed the mark.  The blog posts written by “Karen” seemed pointless to me, if not overly pretentious-sounding, and took away from the overall story. I failed to connect well with any of the characters- Merry included- who I had some sympathy for but just could not fully understand.  Is Marjorie possessed?  Is she suffering from a debilitating mental illness?  This is not made clear, and it’s arguably left up to interpretation.  This might’ve worked for others, but it didn’t work for me.

The plot has been done to death, and we didn’t really see anything different here until the ending.  While the reality show aspect of this story and the Barrett’s life can appear charming on the surface, and does add an intriguing air of disturbance and exploitation, I grew weary of it rather quickly.  

The story is well written, but it just didn’t bring anything substantial to me.  I learned a bit, that’s positive.  The ending was well crafted, albeit predictable.  Predictable Doesn’t need to soil a solid ending, but I felt the thrill factor was lacking.

By no means is this an awful book, it’s just that… it didn’t hit me the way I had hoped.  I’ll be checking out more by the author soon, and hoping I’ll have better luck with his other titles.