YA Review: There's Someone Inside Your House

There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins, September 26, 2017. 289 pages. Published by Dutton Books for Young Readers. Source: Borrowed from Library.

Love hurts...

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.

First Sentence

The egg-shaped timer was on the welcome mat when she came home.

Like last week's review, this was another book that I had been looking forward to reading that, well, fell short of my expectations. 

• It's not that I hated the book, it's just that it was not as good as I was hoping it would be. After mystery and fantasy books, thrillers would be my next favorite genre to read, so, I, of course, was super excited that a new YA thriller was going to be released. There really don't seem to be many of them or at least not that make a big enough splash in the book community to cross my path.  

• Before I talk about what I did not like about There's Someone Inside Your House, I want to discuss what I did like about the book. Okay, so, Stephanie Perkins' totally nailed the thriller vibe with the intense scenes surrounding the murders. I thought she did an excellent job creating a tense atmosphere that captured the essence of the thriller genre. 

• Even though I felt that she excelled in the intense scenes, I must say this, I seriously disliked Makani and Ollie for the majority of the book. I just did not like them as characters nor as a romantic item. What really bothered me about Makani was her attitude. Sure, she had been through a lot, between her not so great family and what happened prior to her arrival in Nebraska, but I can only tolerate the "poor me" attitude for so long. About the only time, I  liked her, as a character, was at the tail end of the book. Now that almost completely made up for her less than great personality. 

• I know this was supposed to be int he vein of teen slasher movies, but I really felt that the romance between the characters took too much away from what could have been a great book. Now if the story had continued more into the psychological angle mixed with the intense atmosphere, then it would have been a four-star read. I'll be honest here, I have never liked teen slasher movies. I have always found them to be rather cringe-worthy and not worth my time. 

• While I may not be big on contemporary reads, I did really enjoy Anna and the French Kiss, so you know I was intrigued to see how she would handle writing something as different as There's Someone Inside Your House. I still enjoyed her writing in this one, just more when she was setting the scene for the dark, gruesome moments as she really did those scenes justice. Did I figure out who did it? Yes, but that's just because I'm me. That's what I do. I would really love to see her do a straight-up horror story! I think she has potential with how well she did on the darker scenes of the book.

Final Verdict: There's Someone Inside Your House- One the one hand, I was pleasantly surprised by how chilling some of the scenes where. There were definitely some intense and chilling scenes throughout the book. On the other hand, I was disappointed with the characters, Makani's big secret, and could have done without the romantic relationship between the two characters. 

A copy of this book was borrowed from the library.