There's Someone Inside Your House: a review

Q U I C K S T A T S

Characters-⭐
Setting-⭐. 5
Writing style-⭐⭐
Overall rating- ⭐⭐

// Content Warning: Alcohol use / Body horror / Bullying / Deadnaming / Death / Gore / Murder / Rape (mentioned) / Suicide (mentioned) / Violence //

Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers

Age group: Young Adult

Genre(s): Thriller

Pub date: September 26th 2017

P R E M I S E

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.

M Y R E V I E W

If you're here from the description, damn you must be some horny bitch.

So, let's jump straight into it.

To make the summary as short as possible, There's Someone Inside Your House follows Makani who has some dark past and decides to leave Hawaii as a result but after settling down with her grandmother, a series of murders take place and she falls in love while her friends are being murdered. Nice.

I'm usually alright with reading sex scenes (mostly the ones that are sort of implied or fade into black) despite being quite sex repulsed. But when a book has like, I don't know, sex scenes at the end of each page (I wish I was kidding), that's when you know I'm literally disgusted and will reduce the overall rating of the entire book. It's just a personal thing; I've got nothing against people who read them/ rate them highly <3

The characters were really bland and they were so dry that the Sahara Desert was jealous. There was no flavour to their personalities and just, no. The romance would have been cute if there was a little more talking and a little less, you guessed it, sex (I've used the word 'sex' too many times to count Good Lord). The only character I could stand was Grandma Young because she was very swag and didn't tolerate any nonsense. She wouldn't beat around the bush and cut the bullshit when having a conversation.

Makani fell into the 'cliche main character' scope with the dark past, no parental bonds maintained, and somehow naive but really smart at the same time? She reminds me of Magda from What She Found in the Woods with the whole secret past thing.

Moving on, there was absolutely no reason for the murders. Cut off the murders and this would have made a fluffy rom-com. The killer was a character nobody knew, let alone cared about. They appeared out of the blue, killed a couple of Makani's friends without an explanation? Bestie, I need answers. And a better plot twist than whatever this was.

The plot wasn't really solid and like I said, the killer had absolutely no reason to do whatever they did. The supposedly dark secret wasn't that surprising because I kind of guessed it had something to do with that after she kind of distracted Ollie after he was fixated on seeing something (if you've read the book, chances are that you know what I'm talking about). I couldn't sympathise with any of the characters, no matter how traumatic the author had made their pasts. Yes, a lot of people undergo traumatic events on a daily basis and yes, they should never ever be shamed or discouraged from speaking up about it. But in this case, the pasts simply served the author's intention of giving redeeming characteristics to each of her character and this is going to sound kind of weird but they felt forced.

There was literally NO plot twist; the entire story was served on a silver platter and there was nothing left for the readers to solve. And this was supposed to be a thriller?

The only thing the author can brag about is the fact that I couldn't guess the murderer and that's because they aren't even a prominent character. Like in the entire book, I literally never saw their name come up until they discover the identity of the killer.

R E P R E S E N T A T I O N

African American/Hawaiian main character
African American side characters
Transgender side character

S I M I L A R B O O K S

Survive the Night by Riley Sage