Hello and welcome back! Hopefully I’m not just yelling into the void and there actually are a few of you here with me, but even if I am all alone here, that’s okay! It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had a conversation with myself. But for now I’m going to go out on a limb and assume there is, in fact, somebody on the other side of this screen, so again – Hello!

This week’s read was “Episode Thirteen,” by Craig DiLouie, and honestly, it was a doozy. I kept seeing it praised all over social media, specifically BookTok, and I thought, why not? Pus, the blurb on Goodreads intrigued me, so I went ahead and got it. Here’s a really watered down synopsis: An up and coming ghost hunters TV show called ‘Fade To Black’ gets a shot at investigating a house that has never been investigated before. This opportunity will hopefully allow them to get a second season, and while not everone on the team is as excited about that as their lead investigator, everyone is excited about this investigation. Naturally, the house in question has quite the history attached to it. It was originally a plantation house, but in the 1970’s it was used by a group of scientists to run experiments and do research into the psychic and paranormal worlds. Only one subject of those experiments survived, everyone else involved vanished. Intriguing, right? I assumed, at first, that it was going to be your typical haunting. Random noises, some disembodied voices, sketchy EMF recordings that all lead to a big show down that nobody would be able to prove in the end, but the science (or pseud-science if you please) was a fun twist.

Now, normally, I’m not the kind of person to leave a book unread once I start it, but this one seemed doomed for the DNF pile. Full transparency – I tried to read it three times before actually making any meaningful headway. The blame for this falls squarely on the fact that it is written in a series of joural entries, production notes, texts and emails found in the house. Basically, it’s written the way a found-footage horror movie is shot. I hope that makes sense, because I’m not entirely sure how else to describe it. The journal entries were great! They read very much like a normal story in first person and gave good insight into the characters and the group dynamics. Even the emails were okay; a little tedious to get through (I mean, who likes to read work emails?) but they moved the story along and got us where we needed to go.

What really threw me was when we got to the text messages (thankfully there weren’t too many) and the ‘raw footage’ parts. If reading emails isn’t your thing, then reading these text messages will really not do it for you. As for the camera footage – I guess the reader is supposed to be seeing the scene play out as if they themselves are the camera. So, we get a lot of script-like dialogue, interspersed with descriptions of camera angles and shots of what the characters are doing or their facial expressions. It was honestly super difficult for me to get immersed in the story because of this. Every time I was able to get into the dialogue, it would be interrupted by a short paragraph describing the scene, but in the most unnatural way.

With all that being said – the ending really was worth the read. I know! I was genuinely shocked to find myself not only surprised by the ending (a difficult feat, honestly) but thrilled with it! This haunting started out routine and predictable, and ended in one of the most unique twists I’ve read in a long time. It took the idea of a haunted house and flipped it on it’s head, making the reader not only question what it means to be haunted, but what comes after death. Those who seek answers to the afterlife find it in this story in a really thrilling but heartbreaking way. When a horror story can get me to cry, I know it’s something special.

I’m not going to post any spoilers for this one, though I may in future reviews. I think this one needs to speak for itself. You’ll either love or hate the writing style, but even if you’re in my camp and have to really push through the first few chapters, I do think it’s worth it. BookTok wins this time, I’m pleased to report!

Let me know if you’ve read this or plan to, and what you think! See you in the next chapter.