📞🩸Review: The Night House by Jo Nesbø

The Night House by Jo Nesbø
Pub Date: October 3, 2023 (Knopf)
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Source: eARC via NetGalley and gifted copy from publisher for review
Book Links: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org

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This was such a strange book. I was drawn to The Night House because of the awesomely creepy cover. It’s such a great cover! The synopsis also had me intrigued. This was my first time reading a Jo Nesbø book. I found the writing was pretty good, but the story was very odd and I was not a fan of the ending. The story took a turn that I was not expecting.

This story is split into three parts.  The first part takes place when the main character, Richard, is young.  I loved this first part.  It was strange and eerie.  It felt like a coming of age horror story.  I don’t want to give too much away but the 2nd and 3rd parts are really wild and the story really takes a turn by the end.

I would like to read more from this author since I enjoyed parts of this story.  You might like The Night House if you like strange books with horror and fantasy elements and unreliable narrators.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

In the wake of his parents’ tragic deaths in a house fire, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote, insular town of Ballantyne. Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible for his disappearance. No one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie. No one, that is, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. He traces the number that Tom prank called from the phone booth to an abandoned house in the Black Mirror Wood. There he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices begin to whisper in his ear . . .

You know who I am. She’s going to burn. The one you love is going to burn. There’s not a thing you can do about it.

When another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence–and preserve his sanity–as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne and pursuing his destruction.

Then again, Richard may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story . . .

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Thanks For Reading!