A family buys a new house…. and experiences tons of scary things! So, kids, never buy a house that is infamous. ;D

After finishing the Beckoning Dead series, or well finishing it up to the third book. I wanted to continue and I decided this would be the first book! I was in the mood for a Haunted House story and I hoped that Ambrose Ibsen would give me a good one!

Meet the Ripley family (awesome name btw). Dad, Jack, has earned lots of money and finally can buy a house for his family and move out of the leaky hell that is their old home. I don’t really get why he would buy this one given the history. Really, for me? I don’t care that it is cheap. I wouldn’t buy a house if people warned me about it. But hey, if our family hadn’t bought the house we wouldn’t have this awesomely spooky story that gave me many chills.

In this book we get not just the POV of the dad (Jack), but also of his daughters (Amy and Abigail), his wife (Darcy), and later also Becca’s (a friend) POV. I was delighted with all these POVs as it gave an even clearer image on the haunting, plus made everything ten times more scary. We see how each is affected. Amy sees a lot of The Jackal Man and has some frightening things happening. Abigail has a ghost lurking around and sees The Jackal Man (I found the ghost more scary as he kept being so close to Abigail and forced her to play with him). Darcy hears and sees some weird things. Jake also has some experiences but doesn’t want to believe. Doesn’t want to see.

Out of the POVs I liked Amy’s the most followed by Darcy. They were both great characters.

But the worst one was Jack. I am just sick and tired that the man of the horror stories are always sceptical and rude and get more and more aggressive as the problems get more severe. If we could just dump that stupid ass trope I would love it. Let the man be supportive of his wife. Doesn’t have to mean they move out of the hosue, but he could at least listen to her and find ways to make the house better, or make plans to get something to be done about the house. I just wanted to kick Jack in the sea quite a few times throughout the book. He just pissed me off. The worst wasn’t even how he kept denying there was something, despite that things happened to him as well, the thing that pissed me off the most was how he treated his wife and his kids. He treats his wife as shit. She is scared, she is afraid. Not just for herself but also for the kids. And what do you do? Shout at her. Get pissed. Tell her she should stop being entitled and whiny and so on. I was just disgusted with this guy. And later on he also had an opinion on various other people. Like how he talked about Becca was just so NOPE for me. If someone talked so much shit about a dear friend of mine? I would have definitely said something about it. Fuck that shit. Sorry for my language. I could probably go on, but I just want to stop thinking about Jack.

With each new day and each new things learned about the house and the previous occupants things got scarier and scarier. It was very well written and I was having goosebumps many times while reading! I loved the ghosts, the Jackal Man was perfection.

The ending, I am a bit on the fence about it. The last few pages were very well done, but that last page just has me scratching my head on what I think about it… .I am unsure.

But all in all, despite Jack being a pest and a horrible person, despite being confused about the last page, I had so much fun reading this one and I am happy I read it! Recommended if you want a spooky and scary read!