"The Haunting of Hill House," a non-technical review

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Back when I was on Twitter, I asked the stupid writing community for a story about a good haunted house. Usually, when somebody on Twitter asks for something to read, they get book plug-ins from their fellow authors. This was what I was hoping for, because I was in the mood to buy and I was going to buy somebody's book.

Nobody sent me anything except for a couple of people, and the books weren't written by them. One was The Amityville Horror and the other was The Haunting of Hill House. I put both on my reading list and was finally able to get one of them. The Haunting of Hill House.

I feel like The Shining was Stephen King's answer to Hill House.

The main character annoyed me. Unlike the woman who made the intro almost as long as the book, I was not invested in Eleanor's character. It was like, can someone kick her please? Hill House, if you eat her, I'll love you forever. And then it ate her and Hill House and I became friends.

Did the author scare herself, and so at the last second she softened the scary parts and turned it into a boring women's fiction?

Eleanor and Theodora get into this big fight because reasons. The intro tries to explain it, but seriously, that quarrel comes out of nowhere. I attributed it to the house possessing Eleanor and making her believe things that weren't true.

Something scary finally happens about two third's into the book, but the scarier of the two happenings occur off camera. We're stuck with Eleanor cowering to the sound of strange knockings when the doctor and Luke are out chasing down a creepy ghost dog. Something weird happens to everybody, but it all happens off camera. By the time it's Eleanor's turn, I'm about to ready to quit reading already.

When the doctor's wife shows up, the book starts picking up. The wife herself is annoying as crap, but she makes a valid point about the doctor being stupid. He came to Hill House looking for psychic phenomena, and when he did see something, he said, "It was my imagination." When his wife comes with her planchette, he won't believe in that either and calls it rubbish. If he's going to look for crap, he better do it expeditiously.

I think I'm gonna go read The Shining.

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