79. The Dead House – Dawn Kurtagich

I had high hopes for this to read quickly and be scary and neither were satisfied, unfortunately. Carly gets to live during the day, Kaitlyn at night, they have a therapist, one of them is an alter of dissociative identity disorder, both of them want to stay, and they’re not doing the best as some sort of other spirit voice is interfering…or is it? This is told through fragments of diaries and therapist notes and described video footage and some other things and in theory that would read quickly, but I kept getting bored. I truly did not expect that. I did expect some dramatic YA realness, but I did not expect to be bored.

I don’t think the whole “what really happened that night” elements were really working very well since I wasn’t remotely intrigued about what really happened to Carly/Kaitlyn’s parents or what happened in the boarding school fire. I wanted the titular dead house to be more of a thing as well, it really resembled the grimy damp basement that Kaitlyn was stuck sitting in for quite a bit. I also didn’t quite get the sisters dynamic of Carly (the peppy one) and Kaitlyn (the dark one) or why it had to be so dramatic when one didn’t leave the other a note when normally these two types of girls would be ignoring each other at school all the time unless they were secretly in love. In this one, the dark one was in love with a demon she didn’t know was a demon and it seemed like Carly had options, but not ones she really was all that interested in.

If you ask Peregrine and Ozymandias why they’re not leaving you notes, they will look everywhere but at you because that is not a question for guinea pigs. No it is not.