No One's Home by D. M. Pulley

3.5 Stars

This was a pretty good book that, initially, certainly ratcheted up the tension.  With multiple storylines centred around the history of the sprawling Rawlingswood mansion.  It seems that the house is plain old bad news and that nobody has ever been happy here - well, almost nobody.

For me, it was just a shame that the final reveal felt like a bit of a cop out.  From the identity of the shadowy girl that seems to be haunting the mansion and the Spielman's to the secret, literally, buried in the garden.  By the time I got to the end I was pretty much just reading to complete the book rather than to find out what happened.  It didn't help that the majority of the book was set in the present day and centred around the Spielman's - a dislikeable pair of parents and a pretty standard teenage boy.  To be entirely fair Hunter is the best of the three but Myron and Margot are unlikeable characters, I get the whole tragedy has shaped them thus thing but wow, what a pair.

The whole is interspersed with flashbacks to various inhabitants who have all met with various tragedy under the roof of Rawlingswood.  All except the Bells; seems they had a pretty good shot at living there on the whole.  It just never really seemed to settle in to a cohesive whole and left me feeling a little blah about the whole thing.  The identity of the shadowy figure was flagged way too early on and I did find it hard to generate any sort of enthusiasm for the haunted aspect of the book.

Far too much gets thrown in to the story somehow and there is little doubt in my mind that all the history of the town and the land is a distraction to the actual tale.  It may have helped if Hunter and his friend Caleb didn't keep mentioning the film Poltergeist as a touchstone for what was happening in the house - to then have a similar plot point roll out just made me roll my eyes somewhat.

Not a bad novel but it failed to grip me as much as I would have anticipated.