I was wandering my local bookstore last week when this cover caught my eye. I saw that it's written in letter format, which is my weakness. So I quickly flipped to the end of the book and was FASCINATED with the ending. A quick Goodreads search showed one of my friends giving it a four star rating.....that's all it took to convince me I needed my own copy.
You Should Have Left is a horror novella coming in with a whopping 114 pages.
A screenwriter rents a massive house for his family with the hopes that he'll be able to get some writing done while his wife and child enjoy the vacation. I know you're probably thinking that sounds like The Shining and honestly, you're not wrong. But this was spookier than The Shining to me. It's one of those books that's written so well that the paranoia doesn't set in until you finish reading it.
Told through letter/diary entries, we watch the main character begin losing grip with reality, which is interspersed with ideas for his upcoming movie sequel. He writes of pictures on walls, dreams in foretelling rooms, women with cold black eyes, spirits standing in this child's room. The halls go on forever, doors to the exact same room, reflections that literally scared the crap out of me.
It wasn't scary in the traditional sense, but it definitely was scary enough that I convinced myself someone was standing in my hallway while I was brushing my teeth this morning. The paranoia snuck up on me, but damn this was a good book.
No comments:
Post a Comment