Book Review
Title: The House at 758
Author: Kathryn Berla
Genre: YA/Family
Rating: *****
Review: All I knew about The House at 759 was it follows 16 year old Krista, whose mother has died and while her father is moving on she is struggling to do the same. We are introduced to Krista as she has become obsessed with House 758 after the death of her mother and she can’t cope with the fact that her father has already moved on with another woman, Marie who is now living with them and it seems like they are trying to make the best of a bad situation but Krista isn’t ready to let go just yet. Krista’s best friend Lyla is going to Maine for the summer and Krista’s father has told her she needs to do something with her summer instead of sitting around. Even though we haven’t been told we can assume Krista’s mother has been dead over a year and the day Marie moved in, Krista moved into her tent on the garage roof, so they don’t actually live in the same house as each other.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, Krista’s father doesn’t even seem to realise that his daughter is drowning in her grief as she is skipping her therapy sessions, doesn’t see any of her friends except Lyla and even begins stealing. The stealing is something which is going to develop as the novel progresses I believe as the boy working in the store, Jake, is someone that knows her from school and even comes to her house to find out why she stole from the store even when she has the money to pay for it but he doesn’t turn her in and I think that is because he knows about the situation she is in right now. Her father has also told her she will be looking after her grandfather when he arrives from Venezuela while he, Marie and Marie’s children are going to Disneyland. The responsibility of caring for Charlie the parakeet which belonged to her mother has also fallen to Krista as her father seems to have forgotten about him completely.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, after Jake comes by she decides to return the item she stole and apologize which prompts Jake to come around again and talk to her. He invites her to a street fair in Napa the next day and without consulting her father or Marie she accepts. Before they go out, Marie asks her to pick some stuff up for the kids and as she wants Marie on her side she says just but we can clearly see Krista resents Marie and the space she has taken that belonged to her mother. That night when she goes out with Jake, they have a great time but when he tries to kiss Krista at the end of the night she pushes him away because she doesn’t feel that she deserves to be happy and despite the crushing loneliness she feels she also doesn’t want to do anything to change that. We can also see that her father and Marie are trying to get her more involved with the younger kids but she doesn’t want to even speak to the people she doesn’t feel belong in her family even if it does make her father happy.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, Krista seems to have an okay relationship with Chad, Marie’s son while Emma, her daughter is quite little. Krista ends up taking to house 758 and there seems to be something about this house that draws Krista in and her father wants her to stay away from it. When her dad confronts her about taking the children there, he wants her to go back to therapist and she sees getting really mad at him but we do get a heart warming scene between Chad and Krista where he says she doesn’t have to explain herself because he gets it and when he confesses to lying about seeing Jake flirting with another girl, she can’t even summon the energy to be mad at him for it because he doesn’t want to get inside her head like everyone else.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, Krista hasn’t reconnected with Jake after the terrible ending to their date but she is building a connection with Chad and his love of soccer even inspires her to get back into fitness herself, even if it isn’t swimming. We also get three major scenes in this part of the novel as we learn Krista’s mother was killing by Omar Aziz who was texting while driving and the house Krista has been going to is his home. Omar was convicted as a minor and only served two years because his family was financial dependent on him after his father was killed in Afghanistan as he was a translator with the US military. Omar had been working three jobs the night he killed Krista’s mother and was texting his boss. Krista doesn’t seem to hate him but she can’t let Omar go and she feels that two years wasn’t enough for taking her mother away. Krista and her father have a massive argument over this which leads to both of them breaking down, showing neither has really moved on from it even though it seemed like it on the surface. The final big scene is where we are introduced to Krista’s grandfather, Gyuri and he explains grief, loss and moving on in a way that is simple for Krista to understand. She is also considering finishing her mother’s documentary about her family’s history with the Holocaust, which might help her find some closure.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, there seems to be something wrong with Krista’s grandfather but we don’t know what it is yet but they spend some quality tome together as he has given her unspoken permission to finish her mother’s project as he tells her all about his life growing up in Nazi Germany and how his entire family was taken and killed by them in different ways which she records in her mother’s unfinished journal. She is also back talking to Jake and they are in a relationship now, they even start running together which helps effectively take her mind of Omar and what he did to their family. I did like the fact that the state of the family in reflected in Charlie, the bird, who looks very sickly at the beginning of the book but by the time Gyuri has been there a few days he is beginning to heal, much like Krista and the family in general.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, finally found some resolution but it does leave us with the message that things like loss and grief don’t go away overnight, in fact they never go away, you just notice it less as time passes. By the end, we see a brief confrontation between Omar and Krista but she can’t say anything in that moment, and we also learn that it wasn’t just Krista’s mother that died that day but her younger sister, Lucy too. However, as the novel draws to a close we see that Krista has started seeing her therapist again taking her grandfather’s word to heart, she relationship with Jake is great and the relationship with her father is getting better. Together, she and her father visit the Aziz family one last time although we don’t know what happened in this interaction. Her father and Marie also take a break thinking of what is best for their children before getting into a relationship that neither of them is really ready for. Overall, The House at 758 was beautiful and heartfelt and made me tear up more than once.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
I received this review copy from NetGalley.
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