Book Review
Title: There’s Someone Inside Your House
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Genre: YA/Horror/Romance
Rating: ****
Review: I haven’t read anything by Stephanie Perkins before because of the terrible things I have heard about the Anna and the French Kiss series but I was so intrigued when she came out with a horror/romance that I had to pick it up (even if it is three years too late). The book opens with the hours leading up to the brutal murder of Haley Whitehall. While we don’t see the murder, we do see that someone was in her house moving items around intending to scare Haley before killing her. When the news reaches her classmates the next day we are introduced to our protagonist, Makani Young. Makani has been sent to live with her grandmother in Nebraska from Hawaii after an incident that meant it wasn’t safe for Makani to stay there or continuing to use her birth name, so she changes it to her mother’s maiden name. Even without knowing what happened we know it must have been big for these measures to be taken. At this point, Makani has been in Nebraska a year and has made some friends including Darby who is trans and even had a brief fling with the school weirdo, Ollie who she still has feelings for, but their “relationship” ended suddenly and without explanation. The opening to There’s Someone Inside Your House was definitely gripping and I can’t wait to read some more.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, Makani decides to mend her relationship with Ollie but both of them aren’t really talkers, so it doesn’t go well. In the aftermath of Haley’s murder everyone is stunning, but the rumour mill immediately takes effort and some of them point to Ollie as the killer although I don’t believe this as he doesn’t seem to have that within him, but I have been proven wrong before. However, the pair do make up and kind of pick up their relationship where they left off but without the awkwardness and more clear talking and it was very funny to watch Ollie meets Makani’s grandmother and how good both of them are at lying which might come into play later on. The pair hang out for a while but Ollie is called into work after another employee gets fired for stealing but we have seen some strange things at work, like Makani hearing things outside her grandmother’s home but this could have been her grandmother sleepwalking but I doubt it. Ollie also knows a lot about the murder because his brother works for the police force and Ollie has overheard some conversations as well as looked through confidential files. Makani’s past also seems to be a reason why she doesn’t have many friends or seem that social in general and I can’t wait to find out what happened in Hawaii. However, I was having a big issue with Perkins writing a trans character, while she does send the right messages about interacting with trans people she often misgenders Darby switching between the his and her pronouns, which almost makes me think that making Darby trans was an afterthought on the author’s part.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, the shock of Haley’s death is beginning to settle down when another student is murdered, this time inside the school and everything explodes again. This time though every student and member of staff needs to be question including Makani, but she is nervous, thinking that the police including Ollie’s brother, Chris might know about what happened in her past, but they don’t. Afterwards, Ollie and Makani head back to his house but before they can even leave the school grounds, a reporter grabs Makani and she screams which seems to be her normal reaction when stressed which makes me think that something very serious happened in her past. After getting back to Ollie’s, she looks into one of the files that Chris has left lying around and realises the sheer level of violence and gore at Haley’s murder before making out with Ollie again but Chris happened to be lurking in the room scaring the crap out of them. Although I don’t get how Chris got there so quick since Makani and Ollie left immediately after her interview only stopping for a few moments. It is beginning to seem like both Matt and Haley knew their killers and Matt even mentions the person possibly being special needs, in addition to this, the police think that it is someone smaller than Matt as they used the stab to the gut to disable him before proceeding with their real work. However, there aren’t that many clues to the killer’s identity at this point, but I can’t wait to see the mystery unfold.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, I didn’t have a clue who the murderer was but I was beginning to suspect that Makani might have possibly been involved in something similar back in Hawaii but there is little evidence pointing towards that right now. I was also loving the romance between Ollie and Makani as it is very rare to get a decent romance in a horror novel because they don’t general fit the plot and I was nervous about it distracting me from the actual mystery but it seems to fit very well within the story and Ollie is adorable and I love him. In the wake of the third murder it seems like the police have absolutely nothing to go on but Makani and Ollie discuss the events and both realises that it must have been someone who knew Rodrigo because they were comfortable staying the house hours after they murdered him meaning they knew his parents were away and didn’t have to be worried about being caught there. Rodrigo is also a different type of victim unlike Matt and Haley, he wasn’t a very popular guy and had a small group of friends. However, this murder divides Makani’s friendship group as Darby and Alex still suspect that Ollie might be involved and after Rodrigo’s death, Alex is even more likely to believe it since she had a crush on Rodrigo. While I still don’t suspect Ollie, I can see he often says or does the wrong thing at the wrong time because he is social awkward. We have also realised that the killer is stalking Makani because things are moving around her house, although there is some part of me that still believes this might be the grandmother but knowing the killer has a habit for moving things around in the victims homes before killing them makes me believe that the killer has a special interest in Makani that might have to do with her past.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, I still didn’t have any idea who the killer could be, but every character now seems to be a suspect, even Grandma Young with her sleepwalking habit. However, when Grandma Young attends a sleep clinic, Ollie, and Makani head back to hers for obvious reasons, but Makani realises a few hours later that stuff is moving around the house. She quickly puts two and two together from what she knows about the previous murders and realises she is being targeted when the killer emerges from the shadows and attacks her. Luckily both Ollie and her grandmother are quickly on the scene and the killer is no match for the trio and flees, before he does, he slices Makani’s arm and stabs her grandmother, but they also learn his identity, David Ware, Rodrigo’s best friend. In the aftermath, Makani knows she didn’t interact with David and the only reason for him to target her and stalk her for months is that he learnt exactly what had gone on in her past and while her grandmother is recovering in the hospital she decides to come clean about it to Alex, Darby, and Ollie because she feels there is no way she can keep it a secret especially after David’s impending capture.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, Makani tells her friends about her past which wasn’t as bad as I was expected. Makani was involved with a hazing thing for the swim team which got majorly out of hand and she assaulted Jasmine, the girl she would have claimed was her best friend at the time and she has carried around the guilt of that act for so long but her friends assure her that even though she did a bad thing, she isn’t a bad person. Ollie also confides in her about his past and how he hurt his brother with his actions and attitude after their parents death which makes Makani feel a lot better about herself and more confident in their relationship now she knows he isn’t going to leave her just because of this thing she did in the past. However, as they are walking home from the memorial, they come across another grizzly murder committed by David who is still on the loose and immediately after killing Caleb, he kills Katie. While these victims seems random, they are also students that were very passionate about some, Katie was passionate about college, Haley it was drama, Matt’s was football and so on. It also seems that David lacks the capacity to feel this way and resent his classmates for it but we don’t really know his true motivations yet, but I am hoping that these will be revealed in the last section of the novel.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, David’s killing speed is ramped up successfully killing two in one night and aiming for 3 more but Makani and her friends figure it out and rush to Rosemarie’s house. While they manage to save her, Alex is killed in the process devasting Darby and the trio head off together after David who has fled into the corn maze. When they do finally catch up to him, he isn’t going down without a fight stabbing both Darby and Ollie, leaving Makani alone to chase him down. David is still intent on killing her and they struggle but Makani does come out as the victory as people surround David making it impossible for him to escape but when he lunges for Makani, she retrieves his knife and stabs him landing a fatal blow. It turns out David targeted people who wanted to leave Osbourne like Haley and Matt or people he felt didn’t belong there in the first place like Makani but in the end he failed. While Alex dies, Darby is fine and Ollie in injured but he will survive and in light of the recent events Makani realises that she does have some wonderful people who love her and care about her even if her parents don’t. Overall, I didn’t really like There’s Someone Inside Your House, it had the perfect, creepy atmosphere that screams Halloween. The characters were all well written, apart from the misgendering issue with Darby. The plot was fast paced, tense and really kept you gripped. The only downside was I would have liked a bit more motivation for David’s murders, a bit more substance as to why he choose those particular people out of everyone at the school but other than that it was a really enjoyable read.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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