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Horrid is a stand-alone horror book by Katrina Leno, following along the trope of a haunted house with a lot of bits and pieces of Agatha Christie influences. September 2020 Owlcrate book that, yes, I fully read because it was Halloween month.
Following her father's death, Jane North-Robinson and her mom move from sunny California to the dreary, dilapidated old house in Maine where her mother grew up. All they want is a fresh start, but behind North Manor's doors lurks a history that leaves them feeling more alone...and more tormented.
As the cold New England autumn arrives, and Jane settles in to her new home, she finds solace in old books and memories of her dad. She steadily begins making new friends, but also faces bullying from the resident "bad seed," struggling to tamp down her own worst nature in response. Jane's mom also seems to be spiraling with the return of her childhood home, but she won't reveal why. Then Jane discovers that the "storage room" her mom has kept locked isn't for storage at all--it's a little girl's bedroom, left untouched for years and not quite as empty of inhabitants as it appears....
Is it grief? Mental illness? Or something more...horrid?
This review will be shorter most likely because, well... I was not the biggest fan of this book.
I have never read horror books. I have read mystery/thriller, though mostly the detective type. The one psychological one I read was by a friend, and it was amazing.
So this was my first book I read that was actually supposed to be a horror, and, well... I was just disappointed. I don't know if it is the type of horror or what. It's a haunted house psychological horror. Our main character Jane recently lost her father, and she's feeling a lot of grief and anger from that, which doesn't help by the fact her and her mother have to move back to her mom's original home, which has a lot of mystery and unease surrounding it.
The concept was cool. I was curious about it. I liked the idea of a character facing grief, I liked how real Jane and her mother were, I liked the genuine friendships. I liked the characters overall.
Just... It felt like nothing happened. There is a part in the back of the book that mentions a ghost. So, like, it already gives away there is a ghost in the house.
That passage doesn't appear until the last 50-ish pages...
I guess people could say the strength of this story is with Jane's mental state and how she handles everything, but it just always felt a couple steps away from really hitting.
I expected the horror elements and how she dealt with that to give the few extra steps. To bring it all together and really give that punch. It just... It didn't.
I may have liked this book more if the ending didn't feel so rushed? I don't know if that's how horrors usually work. Like, the tension was so underlying for so long it just... It wasn't there by the end.
It probably doesn't help that when things did start happening, it felt distant. And Jane's character felt like nothing had changed. Nothing had developed. It had been, maybe, and then it... Wasn't. Which some may enjoy the way her character went. I didn't, for multiple reasons, the main one being that it fell flat.
It felt a lot like we were left at a place where more needed to happen afterwards for Jane to feel more human. Maybe that's the issue. Come the end, she didn't really feel all that human at times, and I couldn't really tell if that was intentional.
I also couldn't tell if this was all supposed to tie into mental illness or if it was supposed to be some sort of demonic thing? Like, cool, open ending... But so open ended that things feel confusing? I get the supernatural doesn't always get an explanation, but, like... How to word this without spoilers.
There is definitely this thing surrounding the North family, and you cannot tell if it is being portrayed as some sort of psychological issue or a supernatural issue, because it definitely leans more in one direction, but then the author tries to tie it psychological when it feels supernatural and it just never really feels tied together.
I liked the idea of this book. It had potential. I honestly may have liked this book more as an exploration of grief and dealing with it than the horror story it was, because a lot of the horror elements felt a little flat, and it made the other elements feel flat as well. This 100% could just be a case of "not for me" type books though. If the summary and the idea of a psychological "haunted house with a past" story appeals to you with a very slow burn horror, then you may love this!
