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The Listeners
When the Colby family moved to a suburb of Washington, D.C., they found a huge old mansion in a great part of town. But when 16-year-old Kathy was alone in the house, she had the strangest feeling that someone was there, listening. Soon she learned that the perfect house had a disturbing past.
176 pages, Paperback
First published March 28, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 26, 2020
Kathy Colby and her family move into a new home....that just happens to be the place where, ten years ago, Charles Winston murdered his wife, three sons and pet dog. He was never caught, and is presumed dead. Kathy can feel a distinct cold on the house's second floor landing. She feels some sort of presence listening. What she's not aware of, but the reader is, is that Charles Winston is back, and he's got his eyes on his house.
Not bad YA thriller. I boosted the rating to a 3, because it caps off with a terrific, suspenseful, exciting climax. Unfortunately, getting there is a bit of a slog. Not a lot really happens. The haunting doesn't go much further than the cold on the landing, the mysterious barking of a dog, and younger brother Timmy's friendship with Philip, who is clearly the ghost of Charles' youngest son. No real explanation is given for why the family has remained to haunt the property. There's the unfortunate trope of Charles' psychosis being caused by his time as a war veteran.
I suppose it's going to be hard to top the unexpectedly awesome Summer's End, but this is a quick and easy read, and the finale is really fun. But so much more could have been done with this premise!
Not bad YA thriller. I boosted the rating to a 3, because it caps off with a terrific, suspenseful, exciting climax. Unfortunately, getting there is a bit of a slog. Not a lot really happens. The haunting doesn't go much further than the cold on the landing, the mysterious barking of a dog, and younger brother Timmy's friendship with Philip, who is clearly the ghost of Charles' youngest son. No real explanation is given for why the family has remained to haunt the property. There's the unfortunate trope of Charles' psychosis being caused by his time as a war veteran.
I suppose it's going to be hard to top the unexpectedly awesome Summer's End, but this is a quick and easy read, and the finale is really fun. But so much more could have been done with this premise!
January 31, 2024
It did not take me six days to read this book but when you throw a medical emergency into the mix it can slowly hinder a person's desire to read.
The Listeners by Bebe Faas Rice is a story that is more in tone with the later Music From The Dead but it has an atmosphere that is very chilling with its paranormal and psychological horror.
The first chapter is more of a prologue set in November 1985. We don't get much information but we have enough. A man leaves his home wondering if he has forgotten something but feels as if his family are listening though the house is silent and empty.
Next chapter we are ten years in the future of 1995, same month. Kathy Colby and her family are moving outside of Washington D.C. after living in North Carolina due to her father getting a new job.
Kathy is a junior in high school and she has a little brother named Timothy who is six going on seven. It isn't clearly stated but Timothy is shy and has trouble making friends but has a very active imagination yet he can get frustrated and scared easily in a way that is of a much younger child.
The parents and Kathy are a little worried about that but the familiarity of it isn't lost on me as I use to be a child and now have one. To make things a little lighter, the family has a dog named Mitzi who is a black Cockapoo but she is also an older dog and in a thriller book...
Anyway...
They arrive at the Virginia side near D.C. and find a Colonial home with dormer windows and furnished with some furniture. The siblings go upstairs to see their new rooms, Kathy with her own private bathroom, and she carries Mitzi with her arthritic hip.
Kathy doesn't even get to set Mitzi down on the floor because the dog becomes a trembling heap and she back tracks a little down the steps to sit down with the dog. Mitzi gets out of Kathy's arms and heads back down the stairs as fast as she can manage.
Soon as Kathy steps on the landing, she can feel why her dog freaked out. There is a coldness and a strange feeling comes over Kathy that she zones out until Timmy is calling out to her for about the last few minutes and she shakes it off for a moment.
They discover a garden in the backyard a little overgrown leading down to a fish pond before the wooded area where there is a treehouse in an old, sturdy oak. The parents inspected it when they saw the house and state it is safe enough for Timmy to play in.
Timmy falls in love with tree house and begins to decorate it to eventually become a clubhouse for the new friends he plans to make at school. Kathy beams at seeing her brother so happy and positive and acting like a regular seven-year old that it brings her to tears...me too actually.
Kathy treats her little brother like a kid and not a baby though her mother is still one of those worrisome parents. Her dad is a little less paranoid but still invested in his son being normal yet happy so good parents...normal loving parents.
Normal loving parents who reveal to Kathy about HOW they got such a prestigious looking house near Washington D.C. for such a fortunate price...yep, it's a murder house.
The man we are introduced to in that first brief chapter murdered his wife and their three children.
He was a normal man named Charles Winston who worked for the State Department and came home from overseas. He snapped, killed his family and then left soon afterwards coming home and most people, mostly neighbors, thought it was just a moment of insanity where he must have committed suicide after the guilt set in.
Kathy is rightfully angry and horrified but the parents say it wasn't the bloodbath she is imagining and that they were all poisoned yet that can still be painful and terrifying too...
Kathy doesn't mention the coldness she felt and tries to put aside the knowledge of this decade old murder for her parents' sake. That is until the night before she is start school midterm that next day and hears the sound of a dog whimpering.
The whimpering is not from Mitzi but outside underneath Kathy's bedroom window of the backyard.
Her parents and brother don't hear the dog...only Kathy and Mitzi. Mitzi does not bark at the sound of the other dog but seems to be afraid of it though the animal sounds pitiful and in pain...
On a more positive note, Kathy goes to school and ends up meeting other teens with no problems making friends and even getting invited to join the school newspaper. Invited by a handsome, sandy-haired boy named Matt Hamilton.
Also, Timmy made a friend with a boy named Philip and they played in the treehouse. That delights his parents and sister to no end since he seemed to be having trouble making friends at his new school. After all, one of the boys at school said his new house was a bad place where someone died and that doesn't seem nice to try and scare him...
Kathy and Matt become really close that she has to ask him what he knows about the murders since he has lived in Brentwood all his life and reluctantly, Matt shares pretty much the same story with a few more details.
Charles saved some kids when he was in the Middle East during a bombing but he got wounded enough to be put in a convalescent hospital before coming home to his State Department job.
Poisoned with pesticide in cups of cocoa, his wife Estelle and their three boys then had foreign crosses carved in their foreheads. The youngest boy held out the longest and was able to make it out to the fishpond before succumbing to the poisoning...
The only blood spilled that day was of Roxie, the family's black and white Border Collie, who made it from the upstairs landing to make it out the doggie door before bleeding to death on the back deck underneath Kathy's bedroom window...
Everything has the makings of a good thriller with supernatural undertones but when we get a few chapters from a different perspective it takes away from some of the suspense but by no means the horror.
Revelations are pieces of the puzzle that fall into place for Kathy quickly but nobody seems to be listening...very clever and fitting title pun huh? The man hears voices too and that is why the creepy factor doesn't fade given the climate of today and most of the reasons killers do what they do...
We reach a final act that is climatic and full of suspense once more with an eerie if melancholy outcome.
As we began, the last chapter is more of a prologue that takes us ahead one year later and even though we have had first and third person narration, the way this last chapter is told feels surreal.
A fitting way to end such a contemporary yet slightly gothic novel on a cold January night...
The Listeners by Bebe Faas Rice is a story that is more in tone with the later Music From The Dead but it has an atmosphere that is very chilling with its paranormal and psychological horror.
The first chapter is more of a prologue set in November 1985. We don't get much information but we have enough. A man leaves his home wondering if he has forgotten something but feels as if his family are listening though the house is silent and empty.
Next chapter we are ten years in the future of 1995, same month. Kathy Colby and her family are moving outside of Washington D.C. after living in North Carolina due to her father getting a new job.
Kathy is a junior in high school and she has a little brother named Timothy who is six going on seven. It isn't clearly stated but Timothy is shy and has trouble making friends but has a very active imagination yet he can get frustrated and scared easily in a way that is of a much younger child.
The parents and Kathy are a little worried about that but the familiarity of it isn't lost on me as I use to be a child and now have one. To make things a little lighter, the family has a dog named Mitzi who is a black Cockapoo but she is also an older dog and in a thriller book...
Anyway...
They arrive at the Virginia side near D.C. and find a Colonial home with dormer windows and furnished with some furniture. The siblings go upstairs to see their new rooms, Kathy with her own private bathroom, and she carries Mitzi with her arthritic hip.
Kathy doesn't even get to set Mitzi down on the floor because the dog becomes a trembling heap and she back tracks a little down the steps to sit down with the dog. Mitzi gets out of Kathy's arms and heads back down the stairs as fast as she can manage.
Soon as Kathy steps on the landing, she can feel why her dog freaked out. There is a coldness and a strange feeling comes over Kathy that she zones out until Timmy is calling out to her for about the last few minutes and she shakes it off for a moment.
They discover a garden in the backyard a little overgrown leading down to a fish pond before the wooded area where there is a treehouse in an old, sturdy oak. The parents inspected it when they saw the house and state it is safe enough for Timmy to play in.
Timmy falls in love with tree house and begins to decorate it to eventually become a clubhouse for the new friends he plans to make at school. Kathy beams at seeing her brother so happy and positive and acting like a regular seven-year old that it brings her to tears...me too actually.
Kathy treats her little brother like a kid and not a baby though her mother is still one of those worrisome parents. Her dad is a little less paranoid but still invested in his son being normal yet happy so good parents...normal loving parents.
Normal loving parents who reveal to Kathy about HOW they got such a prestigious looking house near Washington D.C. for such a fortunate price...yep, it's a murder house.
The man we are introduced to in that first brief chapter murdered his wife and their three children.
He was a normal man named Charles Winston who worked for the State Department and came home from overseas. He snapped, killed his family and then left soon afterwards coming home and most people, mostly neighbors, thought it was just a moment of insanity where he must have committed suicide after the guilt set in.
Kathy is rightfully angry and horrified but the parents say it wasn't the bloodbath she is imagining and that they were all poisoned yet that can still be painful and terrifying too...
Kathy doesn't mention the coldness she felt and tries to put aside the knowledge of this decade old murder for her parents' sake. That is until the night before she is start school midterm that next day and hears the sound of a dog whimpering.
The whimpering is not from Mitzi but outside underneath Kathy's bedroom window of the backyard.
Her parents and brother don't hear the dog...only Kathy and Mitzi. Mitzi does not bark at the sound of the other dog but seems to be afraid of it though the animal sounds pitiful and in pain...
On a more positive note, Kathy goes to school and ends up meeting other teens with no problems making friends and even getting invited to join the school newspaper. Invited by a handsome, sandy-haired boy named Matt Hamilton.
Also, Timmy made a friend with a boy named Philip and they played in the treehouse. That delights his parents and sister to no end since he seemed to be having trouble making friends at his new school. After all, one of the boys at school said his new house was a bad place where someone died and that doesn't seem nice to try and scare him...
Kathy and Matt become really close that she has to ask him what he knows about the murders since he has lived in Brentwood all his life and reluctantly, Matt shares pretty much the same story with a few more details.
Charles saved some kids when he was in the Middle East during a bombing but he got wounded enough to be put in a convalescent hospital before coming home to his State Department job.
Poisoned with pesticide in cups of cocoa, his wife Estelle and their three boys then had foreign crosses carved in their foreheads. The youngest boy held out the longest and was able to make it out to the fishpond before succumbing to the poisoning...
The only blood spilled that day was of Roxie, the family's black and white Border Collie, who made it from the upstairs landing to make it out the doggie door before bleeding to death on the back deck underneath Kathy's bedroom window...
Everything has the makings of a good thriller with supernatural undertones but when we get a few chapters from a different perspective it takes away from some of the suspense but by no means the horror.
Revelations are pieces of the puzzle that fall into place for Kathy quickly but nobody seems to be listening...very clever and fitting title pun huh? The man hears voices too and that is why the creepy factor doesn't fade given the climate of today and most of the reasons killers do what they do...
We reach a final act that is climatic and full of suspense once more with an eerie if melancholy outcome.
As we began, the last chapter is more of a prologue that takes us ahead one year later and even though we have had first and third person narration, the way this last chapter is told feels surreal.
A fitting way to end such a contemporary yet slightly gothic novel on a cold January night...
March 22, 2017
90's ghost story with predictable results. Not terrible but not my favorite either.
November 11, 2021
Good story telling.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews