Review: The Perfectly Fine House

Author: Stephen Kozeniewski and Wile E. Young

Started reading: April 17th 2022

Finished the book: April 25th 2022

Pages: 232

Genres: Paranormal, Horror

Published: March 16th 2020

Source: Digital copy from the author

Goodreads score: 3.75

My score:

Synopsis

In an alternate reality where ghosts are as commonplace as the weather, the most terrifying thing imaginable is a house not being haunted.

Donna Fitzpatrick runs a surrogacy agency, where ghosts can briefly possess volunteers in order to enjoy carnal pleasures. She’s also working herself into an early grave. But that’s no big deal because death is no worse than puberty. That’s particularly evident in Donna’s twin, Kyle, a self-absorbed roustabout who spends most of his time high on sage. Kyle’s been in arrested development since his motorcycle accident fifteen years ago.

When Donna has a panic attack, Kyle insists she take a vacation at an abandoned mansion. There’s just one small problem: there isn’t a single ghost in Jackson Manor. And while an unhaunted house seems no worse than an oddity at first, soon ghosts go missing, natural disasters consume entire cities, and every afterlife on earth is threatened by the terrible secret behind... The Perfectly Fine House..

My thoughts

It's so hard for me to give a book a low rating when an author was very kind and respectfully asked me for a review. But I pride myself in being an honest blogger and so that's what I'll do here. I have been doubting about 2 and 3 stars, but I just didn't like this book enough to give it 3 stars, sadly. I feel that the premise of the book is very promising, but the story just fell flat for me.

Pros

• Unique story: I felt like this was a really unique story and definitely a book that I won't forget easily. What if your loved ones don't leave you when you die? What if your life only starts when you die? Really interesting! I loved the worldbuilding in this book, and I think that the authors could have gone even further with it! Overall it was very creative.
• Easily written: This book was easy to read, you can see that I didn't take too long to read this book. I could easily get through it and had no hard time to understand anything that was written.

Cons

• Don't add up: There were some things that didn't really add up for me, or that I didn't understand. The characters were doing things that I felt like didn't match their personality. Also this one weird scene has the book calling a character a teenager, and then a little girl? I also felt like this book didn't take place in a few weeks, but it felt for me more like a a couple of days.
• Quick explanation: I felt like some of the things in this book were made up just to explain things away real quick. I can't describe it that well and of course I have no clue about the writing process for this book. But I felt like some things were made up on the go, instead of planning it ahead. That's how it felt anyway.
• Characters: I did not care for the characters at all. I felt like their bad character traits were way more present in this book and maybe that made me not care for them? I felt like they missed some layers and some humanity to them. Even though Kyle is ghost, lol

Overall

This is a really unique book that I'm sure I won't forget soon! I always go out to love the books that authors send me for a review, but sometimes a book just doesn't hit it's mark for me. With this book I have to respectfully say that I did not like this book, but I've also seen a lot of people who did! So just go out there, and give it a try.

Thanks for reading!

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