“He stood motionless in the entryway, staring at his own shadow splayed before him like a stain upon the floor.”

From Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker’s House.

When a falling-out-of-love couple finds themselves lost in the backwoods of Alabama, things go from strange to stranger to life threatening in a few short hours. Jack and Stephanie are stranded in the middle of nowhere, so the couple walk to a nearby run-down home in search of a landline phone. It turns out that the family living in the house actually run the house as an inn and there is another couple spending the night there, as well. During a strange dinner with the family and guests, the power is cut, the doors are locked from the outside (by a man who calls himself White), and a tin can is thrown down the chimney with instructions for a sinister game.  The longer that everyone is trapped inside, Jack and Stephanie start to realize that the danger may not just be coming from people outside the house. White’s game ends at dawn… if they can just survive the night inside the house that holds countless horrors.

Peretti and Dekker are both masters of suspenseful thrillers on their own, but working together, they create a book that is filled with raw fear-inducing experiences. The writing is quick, but not so fast that details are missed. It transitions well from chapter to chapter, even as the story shifts in focus to different characters in different nightmares. The story is not predictable, but offers many twists even almost from the very beginning. The uniqueness of the characters develop well throughout the story, whether they are a main character or a secondary character. This is not a book to read for those who do not enjoy gore and violence, but if you’re looking for a book to read during the next few days, House is definitely a great read that will keep you turning the pages until the very end.