YA Weekend: The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich

A review copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich

Genre: Young Adult, Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Little Brown Books for Young Readers (9/15/15)

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Mogsy’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars

First let me say I had no idea before I got an ARC of this novel that it would be written in the epistolary style as a collection of mostly diary entries, though it also includes interview transcripts, descriptions of video footage, emails and newspaper articles, etc. Not to mention the huge visual component! I picked up The Dead House because I love horror and I’m also always on the lookout for good creepy YA, but seriously nothing could have prepared me for the surprise I got when I opened up the book.

In a word, it’s gorgeous. It’s made to look like a compiled report, drawing evidence from multiple sources detailing a disturbing and mysterious “incident”. The book also makes liberal use of images, different fonts, and other visual embellishments to add even great realism to the story. But before I could fall too deeply in love with the eye candy, my cynical side immediately leaped into the picture with a reality check. After all, pretty pages are certainly all well and good, but the real test of course is how well the story stands up in spite of that.

We open with a newspaper article dated February 4, 2005 describing an inferno that ravaged a prestigious boarding school, killing three teenagers and injuring twenty. Next comes an introduction to the report, revealing that two decades have passed since the fire (now referred to as the “Johnson Incident”) but new information has come to light prompting a reinvestigation of the events that led up to the tragedy.

One student, an orphan named Carly Johnson, went missing during the incident but her body was not found among those recovered from the burned ruins. To this day, her whereabouts remain a mystery. No one could deny though, that Carly was a very disturbed girl, as evidenced from her writings in a scorched diary discovered at the school. By all accounts, she struggled with Dissociative Identity Disorder, writing in her diary not as Carly but as her alter “Kaitlyn”, who only emerges after sunset. But who exactly was Kaitlyn Johnson? Was she really just a mental construct of Carly’s mind, or was she something more?

All I have to say is, DAMN this is one creepy book. If you don’t like the epistolary style however, I can’t imagine this book would do anything for you, but I loved it and I thought it made this book an incredibly immersive experience. I found The Dead House really hard to put down, and ended up finishing it in a little more than a day, and it only took me that long because I made myself take a break a couple of times so I could savor it. The format made it a very quick read, but the story was also very addictive and fun; in spite of myself, I found myself totally sucked in.

What makes this one fascinating is also its main character, a one hell of an unreliable narrator. The book is an intimate look into the labyrinthine mind of Kaitlyn Johnson, though the difficulty of separating her words into fact versus fiction is further compounded when faced with the question of whether or not she actually exists. Kaitlyn believes she is real, and that’s what matters in the end. Her diary entries reveal a desperate soul wanting nothing more to be believed that she is not just a symptom or a made-up part of Carly’s mind. In her state of mind, she makes decisions that sometimes won’t make sense or may seem very extreme.

All throughout the book though is a sense of ambiguity – which isn’t necessarily a negative, especially when we’re talking about paranormal horror or psychological thrillers. It’s eerie and unsettling precisely because you won’t get all the answers tied up neatly with a bow and served on a platter. By design, we are constantly kept guessing: Are we looking at the results of an actual paranormal situation or the ravings of a mentally unstable teenager? The report is presented with all the pieces of evidence ordered by date, the whole story being gradually revealed to the reader as each page moves us closer towards the day of the incident. This a book best experienced firsthand, so I hesitate to give much more information about the plot.

Did I have my misgivings though? Well, yes. I thought the ending wrapped up way too quickly, but this is in part due to the limitations of the format. But there’s no denying that all the major reveals came hard and fast, all in the last 30 pages or so. There was also one “twist” that was painfully predictable, the number of red herrings thrown at us notwithstanding. Part of the problem was a romance that felt out of place, among other relationships between Kaitlyn/Carly and other characters that just didn’t add up. I am also a little tired of YA books that portray doctors and especially mental healthcare professionals as incompetent, insensitive or overbearing. In this case, poor Dr. Lansing was all three, which I felt was a rather inelegant way to paint her as a villain early on and drum up sympathy for Kaitlyn.

These flaws were very minor though, certainly not enough to take much away from the experience. All told, I had a really good time with The Dead House. I confess I had my doubts when I first started this novel and even resolved to keep a level head while reading so that I wouldn’t be dazzled by the unique structure of the novel and the flashy visuals. All the same, I ended up devouring this book. It’s undeniably entertaining and addictive, which sets it apart from being just another gimmick or run-of-the-mill YA horror.