The Haunting by Natasha Preston

Synopsis: Haunted by the past . . .

Penny’s trying to forget about her ex, Nash. His father was arrested for the brutal murder of four teenagers on Devil’s Night last year. Penny’s parents have forbidden her to have anything to do with Nash or his family. It’s hard not to think of what happened as spooky season gets underway–but she’s trying.

That stops when she goes to the Halloween store with her friends to find a costume. What she finds instead is ripped from a horror movie: a girl from school bleeding out on the floor of a dressing room. Stabbed.

Is a copycat killer on the loose? The adults are saying no. But Penny knows better.

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This book really drew me in with it’s description. I really, REALLY wanted to enjoy it. However I was let down on several fronts: character design, plot, the ‘horror’ aspect, and the ending made me just frustrated.

I try to be really fair when it comes to my reviews on books, even if a book is not my cup of tea I can always find -something- good about it. Unfortunately this book falls short, and barely had any redeeming qualities. It was essentially like watching the ‘Scream’ movie franchise. Cookie-cutter ‘horror’ with just about every stereotype you can imagine. So unless you’ve never watched any cult classic Halloween type horror movies, this will follow that well formed archetype and potentially be underwhelming.

Typical high school drama, characters, bullies and relationships. The main character Penny is nearly predictable in all her actions, and just about the time I started to enjoy seeing things from her point of view – she does something else dumb. And realistically it’s hard to imagine if there was a serial killer on the loose that: 1) Her parents would leave her alone to go work in the city for a weekend – leaving her unsupervised alone. 2) That her parents KNOWING she sneaks out of the house almost constantly (which apparently every kid in this small town does), just leave her to her own devices. The author kept making a point of every time Penny snuck out her parents would throw a fit and then…. go to bed and she would sneak out again. Like at no point were they going to check to see if their daughter was in the house? Or heck, with how ‘security’ conscious the whole town was with cameras everywhere, why didn’t her parents have cameras on their house? A security system? Something. Anything. I mean her dad gave her pepper spray, and they ‘threatened’ to ground her if she snuck out again. Which did literally nothing to change her behavior.

Penny’s relationship with Nash is probably the most believable considering it’s incredibly immature but they are teenagers so it makes sense. For all the disobeying Penny does of her parents other rules, its remarkable that when they tell her she can’t see him anymore that’s the one rule she follows unquestioningly but then feels ‘guilty’ about it. The story is written in first person, and the dialog at times got confusing. So at times it was very choppy reading trying to decipher Penny’s inner conversation, the verbal dialog, actions of her friends, etc. I think the time it was most clear was when she was texting her friends. Those few moments everything felt less disjointed.

There is so much to say, but I hate giving away spoilers. The small town cops are the typical small town cops that you see in horror movies and read in other books. When the Feds come in, its more of the same. The biggest let down was the ending. I like a good cliffhanger as much as the next person – but this one was just pointless. If you’re writing a book and intend to follow it up with a sequel or heck, even finish it with an epilogue cliff hangers in the last official chapter makes sense. But when there’s no epilogue, no sequel planned — the cliffhanger just left loose ends and was very dissatisfying. Sometimes an author can pull a cliffhanger off – this unfortunately was not achieved here. I’ve looked at some reviews of her other books and realized this is a pattern for books written by Natasha Preston. Which is disappointing and overall left me underwhelmed.

The title of the book even irritates me, I was hoping for a ‘supernatural’ vibe, and this was just straight up serial killer/slasher novel.

To wrap this up – I would definitely not read this again, I had the killer picked out by the 5th chapter — that’s how ‘obvious’ it was from the start. If you’re looking for a fun, not scary, Halloween slasher book – this is the book for you.

You can view and buy the book on Amazon here.

Overall Rating: 2/10

Re-readability Rating: 1/10