#ReadAllTheBooks’s Reviews > Twelve Nights at Rotter House > Status Update

I'm going to mention major spoilers, so fair warning.

The basic twist of this book is that it's all generally taking place in the main character's head and takes place during or just after he killed his wife and best friend in a jealous rage. Here's the general synopsis I have so far:

Felix is a struggling travel writer who covers haunted locations. His books bring in some income, but not enough to live off of or really even support his work. He's been told by his wife Elsa that if his next book isn't successful Felix must quit the writing gig and take on a more lucrative job, like teaching or copyediting. With this requirement in mind, Felix decides to cover Rotterdam Mansion, the site of multiple deaths and murders. It's full of mystery and intrigue, as not all of the deaths have been solved and the house seems to be a magnet for death and destruction.

Felix's idea is to spend thirteen nights in the house, during which he hopes that enough spooky stuff will happen to where he can write the next Amityville Horror. Along for the ride is Felix's childhood best friend Thomas. About a year prior to the book's start Felix, Thomas, and the two men's respective spouses got incredibly drunk, to the point where Felix was unable to move and blacked out. That night Thomas, his wife, and Elsa supposedly had a threesome, however none of the three involved claim to remember anything that happened. Evidence points towards something happening and Felix suspects that one or all of them are lying about not remembering. This has put a huge strain on their friendship and on both marriages, so both Felix and Thomas are hoping that staying together in Rotterdam will help repair things.

During their stay in the mansion, a series of seemingly supernatural events occur. The initial events are mild and for much of the events the pair believe it to be the actions of the mansion's owner, who wants to turn it into a tourist attraction. As the events grow more intense, this theory becomes less feasible, to the point where it would be nigh impossible for it to all be non-supernatural.

This is about where I am at present. Throughout all of this there are also several small hints thrown in about the reality of the situation. To be honest, my impression is that the murders all occurred before the book even started. Everything is just Felix's way of trying to process the horrific events that he caused. Thomas occasionally says things that hint that he's either not actually there OR that he's a ghost. There are also some small hints that a couple of the conversations may have happened, but that Felix is reinterpreting them in a way that makes sense to him. So for example the scene where Thomas and Felix talk about the night Thomas supposedly slept with Elsa, everything is done in the pitch blackness. This is one conversation that I do think actually happened and that it specifically happened just before Felix murdered his friend. His mind doesn't want to process what he did, so instead it has him process the talk after the murder occurred and in pitch blackness. The darkness doesn't force Felix to witness what he did, so it allows him to reimagine the conversation in a way more favorable to himself.

When this started I picked up some serious Session 9 vibes here, so I was predicting that Elsa was dead and that cheating of some type had occurred. I just wasn't sure if it was Thomas and Elsa or Thomas and Felix. I didn't pick up on the whole "the mind is a haunted house" and "haunted houses are people" bit, but the author does actually go out of his way to highlight this as a theme earlier in the novel and repeat it occasionally throughout. Knowing this has actually made it kind of fun to spot the hints, some of which are extremely visible but also very subtle. At one point one of the characters mentions the movie Identity, which was a pretty big giveaway.