Title: There’s Someone Inside Your House
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Published: 2017
Genre: Young Adult/Thriller
Makani Young thought she’d left her dark past behind her in Hawaii, settling in with her grandmother in landlocked Nebraska. She’s found new friends and has even started to fall for mysterious outsider Ollie Larsson. But her past isn’t far behind. Then, one by one, the students of Osborne Hugh begin to die in a series of gruesome murders, each with increasingly grotesque flair. As the terror grows closer and her feelings for Ollie intensify, Makani is forced to confront her own dark secrets.
Source: Goodreads
I was a fan of Stephanie Perkins’ contemporary books, so I was interested to see her take on a thriller. I had heard that it was reminiscent of ‘Scream’, which I loved. This book follows a high schooler, Makani, who has moved from Hawaii to Nebraska to live with her grandmother. But Makani has a dark secret that she is hiding. Now this wasn’t the most captivating book, and it dragged at times. I enjoyed that last half of the book, but that is about it. It was very romance heavy, which is strange for a thriller. The romance was very instant lovey and based on physical attraction. However, I didn’t feel like there was much chemistry between the characters.
Her friends were barely a factor in the book at all. When we did seem them, they were always throwing shade at her boyfriend. She even mentioned countless times how she felt like the third wheel in her friendship, which seemed pretty toxic to me. Ollie, the love interest, was probably my favorite character. He had a tragic past, but a dark sense of humor as well.
As for Makani’s dark past, it was pretty underwhelming. For a teenager it might have seemed life shattering, but it wasn’t all that horrible. I didn’t understand the reasoning behind her selfish, absent parents. It seemed as though the author added that so we could empathize with the main character. I would have enjoyed it better if she had told her parents off, because her mother was a witch with a B.
“Everybody has at least one moment they deeply regret, but that one moment…it doesn’t define all of you.”
Now the thing that ticked me off the most was the killer reveal and motive. Without giving too much away. The killer was so random and the reveal wasn’t shocking at all. There were times when I thought I knew who the killer was going to be, which kept me interested in the plot. However, I was completely disappointed in the identity of the killer. The motive was on a whole other level of annoyance. Totally ridiculous. I understand that people kill for all different reasons, but I thought it was altogether a terrible ending. It seemed as those the author didn’t know where she was going with the story, and threw a motive together at the last minute.
The best part of the book was the killer’s last attack. This character fought like hell, and wasn’t going to let some serial killer take her life. She was pretty bad ass. I am not disappointed by the book, but I was hoping for more from the story. I probably wouldn’t recommend it to readers unless you are a die-hard Stephanie Perkins fan. Once thing that I wanted to note was that the killing scenes where somewhat graphic, so keep that in mind before you pick it up.
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Until The Next Chapter,
Bunny