Book Review: There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins

Publisher’s description

Scream meets YA in this hotly-anticipated new novel from the bestselling author of Anna and the French Kiss.

“There’s Someone Inside Your House is a heart-pounding page-turner with an outstanding cast of characters, a deliciously creepy setting, and an absolutely merciless body count. Best read at night with big bowl of popcorn, this is a killer addition to the slasher genre written by one of the best contemporary YA writers around.” —Courtney Summers, author of All the Rage and Cracked Up to Be

It’s been almost a year since Makani Young came to live with her grandmother in landlocked Nebraska, and she’s still adjusting to her new life. And still haunted by her past in Hawaii.

Then, one by one, the students of her small town high school begin to die in a series of gruesome murders, each with increasing and grotesque flair. As the terror grows closer and the hunt intensifies for the killer, Makani will be forced to confront her own dark secrets.

Stephanie Perkins, bestselling author of Anna and the French Kiss, returns with a fresh take on the classic teen slasher story that’s fun, quick-witted, and completely impossible to put down.

Amanda’s thoughts

I wouldn’t have picked this up if it weren’t written by Stephanie Perkins. Life is brutal and gruesome and horrific enough—I don’t gravitate toward fiction that is categorized as thriller/horror or stories that feature lots of blood and death. It’s just not my thing. BUT. I have adored every other book Perkins has written, so I gave this a whirl.

The little summary up there really does give you everything you need to know about the plot: there’s a killer on the loose, it seems likely it’s someone from their town/high school, and main character Makani is in the middle of everything. Is her potential love interest the killer? Is the killer coming for her? Can she figure out their motive and stop them? Does her past somehow mark her? It’s a race against time, though, really, the killer is given lots of time and opportunities to strike over and over because what good would the story be if they were found right away? The killer is savvy enough to get away with these actions and grotesque enough to do some very stylized killing (yuck) as well as patient enough to play some long games in setting up their victims. Set aside any logic you may want to bring to this story, because lots of choices and scenarios seem unbelievable and unlikely.

What I wanted were more twists and turns. More reveals. More uncertainty. I wanted to be scared/anxious more than just deeply (DEEPLY) grossed out. Or maybe I wanted Makani and Ollie to get inside of another Perkins book, one that can just be about their romance and their pasts and let us explore them as characters more. I like Perkins’s writing. I like her characters. I like the idea of this book. I think this book will appeal to readers who may want a romance (or… it’s not even really a romance—Makani and Ollie hook up a lot but their connection lacks any real substance or appeal) with some edge to it, but aren’t looking for a real scary horror story. If readers don’t mind gore and bits of story lines that end up going nowhere, but do want a undemanding story where the killer is revealed just over halfway through, then they may enjoy this. I had really high hopes for this book. Anna, Lola, and Isla are hands down three of my favorite YA titles of the past many years. I look forward to Perkins’s return, someday, to more books in the genre she excels in. I don’t think this book will have trouble finding an audience, and an audience who will enjoy it, but Perkins superfans may find this one a far cry from what they were expecting.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher

ISBN-13: 9780525426011
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date: 09/26/2017

Filed under: Book Reviews