Devil House was one of my most anticipated reads this year, but I don't feel like it lived up to the hype.
Gage Chandler is a true crime writer who finds himself fully immersed in recreating the crimes he writes about. So when his agent sends him an article about an obscure double murder in an abandoned porn shop/residential house, he buys the place. The details of the murders are few and far between, but it's his job to decipher what's fact and what's fiction.
The tricky part about this book is we, the reader, also have to decipher what's fact or fiction. Devil House alternates between Gage's POV, chapters from his first book- The White Witch of Morro Bay, his current work in progress- Devil House, and I think we also get a chance to read from our own POV. I know that sounds crazy, but the last chapter has an unknown POV and the person is asking the same questions that I was asking myself.
There's just so many layers to this book that I'm not 100% sure how to even write a review for it. It seems like the author's point was regardless of who hears or tells the story, there will always be another version of it in someone else's mind. With true crime books, it's easy to get caught up in the why of the crime. Rarely have a read a true crime book where the victims are at the forefront.
After sleeping on it and expressing my thoughts through this review, I think I enjoyed this book more than I originally thought. It has substance and potential, it just kind of felt like a mess. But, I think that was the point.
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