This Damned House – Robert Essig

5 stars

This Damned House got me far more than anything I ever thought could.  It’s taken me days to sort out what I wanted to say in this review because I had to work through all the anxiety this book gave me.

Let’s talk cockroaches! I absolutely despise bugs and I’ve never had such a visceral reaction to bugs in horror than I did here.  So much so that the night I read this book, I had a vivid dream about cockroaches popping out of my own skin and spent half the next day convinced that my face was swollen.  Then the poor lady underneath that apartment who realized that she had a lot left to live for far too late.

Next was the vultures…..and the rot.  The whole time I was reading this story, I had a major case of the skin shivers.  Robert has a way with describing body horror that about took me apart.  Then everything got so much worse once the vultures broke in.  Even typing my review all these days later, it’s still making my skin itch.  And finally, the incriminating photos.  This story, while still very horrifying, was really sad.  Seeing what some horrible photos and being stuck in the same space can do to people and their psyche was really disheartening.

Robert brought it all together so well and I loved how each story related to each other.  That poor apartment building, though! They never stood a chance and they didn’t even know why things were happening.  Overall, they were a likeable cast and that made it even harder to read about these horrifying seemingly random things happening to them.

I can’t wait to read the next book, though maybe in broad daylight and not right before I’m going to bed.  No one needs more ultra vivid cockroach nightmares……