Stephanie Perkins | THERE'S SOMEONE INSIDE YOUR HOUSE

Plot:

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.

Review:

This is a perfect read for the night before Halloween! SCREAM meets Young Adult in this suspenseful and fast-paced read. This one starts off as any true horror movie should and drags the reader into a rather twisted tale of teen survival...both in high school and running from a serial killer. The parallels of the woes of being a teenager mixed with the tension of having a serial killer on your feet are really well written. The plot is fast-paced and quite a quick read, especially for a young adult novel. Perkins does a fantastic job of building suspense, creating loving characters, and keeping the reader guessing until the killers reveal. 

What I loved about this one was not only the pacing, but the suspenseful scenes, and how three-dimensional the characters were, especially Grandma Young. That lady was by far my favorite part of this creepy novel. The kill scenes were brutal and kept my on my toes, while the slower scenes were still fun to read with the fantastic characters and still had a great amount of suspense mounting in the background. There's a backstory that is mentioned quite often in the first two-thirds of this one and it really kept me interested knowing that it would finally be revealed...and I definitely wasn't disappointed.

A couple of things that I would change about this one is that, while it's fun to read the suspenseful scenes that are taken right out of a horror movie, I really wish we had some time to get to know some of the characters before they died. To be honest, I felt like majority of them just showed up randomly to be killed and I didn't really care if they died or not...with the exception of a couple. There was one scene where one character was killed that I didn't know, but did something courageous that did pull at my heartstrings a little. My other issue was that I felt that the killers reveal happened too quickly and it wasn't a major character that I really knew and the motive was not really believable.

All in all, this was a quick and entertaining read with only a few hiccups. I would definitely recommend this one for fans of SCREAM and some of the other teen slasher movies from the 90's as it was obvious that is what inspired this one. Perkins also does a great job of writing true teen characters and keeping you really invested in this story. 

Rating: 3.5/5