It Was A Dream To Read This Nightmare (Nightmare House book review)

Nightmare House by Douglas Clegg

If my fiancé hadn’t come home from work, I would have finished this book in one sitting. It is a very quick read. I was ¾ of the way through and already recommending it to my friends. Finally, a book about a haunted house that I enjoyed!

This book is what it means for a haunted house to be its own character and have its own personality. The house was built to be a puzzle, a maze, with occult practices in mind during its creation. Looking into the book as a series, “the Harrow series consists of several books set in or around the haunted estate in the Hudson Valley. Each Harrow story can be read out-of-order because the main continuing character is the dark mansion itself or those people who have or will touch it,” (Amazon). This is so accurate and makes me want to request the rest of the series from the library. In fact, I normally buy the books I like best from each of my terms and this one just might make the cut.

Point-of-view can make or break a book. This story was told from two different perspectives, thought technically the same character: Esteban/Ethan Gravesend as a young man first entering Harrow House and him as an old man looking back on his childhood and manhood. The duality furthered the story’s depth. There was a lot of duality and binaries. The perspective of Ethan, the personalities of Matilda, the morals of Pocket. All of them had good and bad sides, but one always outweighed the other in the end.

Now, if you asked me what the beginning of this book was about, I wouldn’t remember much to say except character introductions up until the tower. But that is fine with me because I was never bored. I enjoyed meeting all the interesting personalities and learning about Ethan’s grandfather until we hit the wonderful twist of family secrets literally hidden in the woodwork. And my goodness, the twist of Matilda being buried alive and then hidden in the walls of the house. I was screaming in the best way possible when finding her body came to light. The twist about her being Ethan’s mother was also fabulous.

This book has perfect examples of good twists in horror throughout it. Nobody is who they seem.  The whole books works really well to keep you unsure of what is morally right. That was something I really appreciated about it, especially in a ghost story which can so often push for the ghost as malicious.

My only complaint with the book really was the end with Maggie. Ethan can’t save her, and despite not knowing her very well, he is convinced they were meant to be together. Therefore, he takes care of Alf and lets him basically take over control of Harrow. This was not a great ending for me, but I did like that Ethan refused to go into the house again.

Overall: I would read this book again and recommend it to friends.