A Review of There's Someone Inside Your House

There's Someone Inside Your House is a book by Stephanie Perkins, author of the Anna and the French Kiss trilogy. Bit of a difference, huh? Makani Young has been moved from Hawaii to Nebraska, to look after her grandmother. She's beginning to settle in, when a series of horrific murders start, centred around the students of her new high school. Her crush, Ollie Larsson also happens to be a suspect in the eyes of the student body.

Horror is an odd genre for me to read. I've read a little Steven King and that's about it. It's not a genre I reach for, not because it scares me too much, but because it doesn't often scare me, at all. I often find supernatural aspects too unrealistic to be believable, and therefore scary. However, that's not the case here. Someone inside my house is an actual, tangible fear. It's something that worries me. This book isn't keep you up at night scary, but it is sort-of look over your shoulder creepy. It's really more of a mystery than a horror.

It does feel weird to add a trigger warning to a review like this, which is about a book already dealing with a gruesome subject, but some people are fine with one thing and not okay with another.

Makani is a fish out of water in Nebraska, and she misses home massively. It should resonate with anyone who has moved house. She's half African-American and half Native Hawaiian. Back home, she used to be a diver, but after a bad event alluded to briefly until about 3/4th of the way through the book, she doesn't anymore. Ollie is a loner who wants to leave the small town himself. At home, he has an odd family set-up. Owing to the deaths of his parents, his older brother is head of the household. Actually, the character and romance-driven moments, as is Perkins's speciality, are the strongest parts of the book. Her wider friends circle also included Darby, a trans man and Alex, a goth. I am sorry, but that is all we learn about them over the course of the book. Perkins was so good in her previous series in giving all her characters dreams and interests or in the case of Isla, explaining why she didn't have one yet, that I was a little disappointed with the lack of it here. In fact, it's the minor characters who die off that seem to have more fleshed out hobbies and goals.

Since there is a mystery aspect, I can't discuss much of the book without spoiling, so: I can't be the only one who thought for a time that the killer would be Makani's grandmother in a sleepwalking state, can I? The mystery isn't so much solved as the answer is given to us, which does feel like an unsatisfying conclusion.

Good book for Hallowe'en, recommended to first-time horror readers as an introduction to the genre.