Devil House by John Darnielle | Book Review

Hmmmm

Devil House by John Darnielle

Released January 2022

Source: Received for Review Consideration

Goodreads  | Amazon

From John Darnielle, the New York Times bestselling author and the singer-songwriter of the Mountain Goats, comes an epic, gripping novel about murder, truth, and the dangers of storytelling.

Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him when he was a child. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success—and a movie adaptation—to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Chandler finds himself in Milpitas, California, a small town whose name rings a bell—his closest childhood friend lived there, once upon a time. He begins his research into the murders with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected—back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.

Devil House is John Darnielle’s most ambitious work yet, a book that blurs the line between fact and fiction, that combines daring formal experimentation with a spellbinding tale of crime, writing, memory, and artistic obsession.

My 2 Cents for Free!

Hmmm, this is a tough one to review. It was a unique experience I will give it that! As many before me have said, despite the title and the beautiful cover art, this book is not what I’d consider a horror novel. And my guidelines for what makes a horror novel are pretty wide open. I don’t even know if I would call it a novel actually. It reads like a collection of sometimes vaguely connected short stories.

The main story is about a former porn store turned super grisly murder site and the true crime writer currently putting all of the pieces together, gathering evidence and whatnot to create a new book. Then it switches gears and becomes the story of his previous true crime novel about a teacher and two students who do something dumb and pay the ultimate price. I was good with that. It really dug into the characters. GREAT stuff, that stuff was so interesting to me and I was enjoying the book but then there appears a chapter about a prince who becomes a king and I was a little dazed and confused by the tonal shift that left me wishing I had skipped that chapter like it was a short story I wasn’t enjoying. Then we get back to the greedy landlords and the porn shop murders and I was back in again. But the final chapter messed with me when the POV switches to a childhood friend of the true crime writer. It gives us a different perspective on the writer but it all felt a bit scattered to me. You may think differently. I guess I prefer a more straightforward narrative in a book like this. I mean, maybe it all makes sense to someone else but I didn’t understand some of these choices that were made.

I don’t even know what to say about this one besides the fact that parts of it weren’t meant for me and other parts hooked me. In the end, after thinking about its construction, it all felt very disjoined both as a fictional true crime novel and as a collection of short stories.

My recommendation? Stick around for the true crime bits and maybe skim the king bit (if you feel the need or are getting a little bored) because it’s a book that does feel too long to me and that section, in particular, felt completely unnecessary or maybe its deep meaning just went over my head. But really you can do whatever you want, I’m not the boss of booktopia and I don’t like it when people tell me how to read, lol.

3 stars, I guess?

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