The First House – JJ Carpenter

3 stars

There were parts of this book that were genuinely creepy! Like don’t-read-this-alone-in your-house-at-night creepy! But those moments took so long to get there that the story lost its charm for me in places.

I love the idea of spiritually sensitive people doing home reno and finding out it’s extremely haunted. It’s such a fun trope and I wish it would be explored a lot more! JJ definitely got the haunting right; there were several moments where I was reading about one of the ghosts lurking about around Murphy’s bed and I started eyeballing the area surrounding my bed. Lots of anxiety and atmosphere when the spooky bits came up.

However, there was a lot of filler in between. A long time was spent detailing renovations or conversations Murphy had with Vasi, and I felt like more action was happening off screen that I was learning of secondhand through Murphy’s recounting. I wanted to see more of what was happening as it was happening, especially at the end.

I also really disliked Murphy, so it was hard for me to want anything good to happen for her. She was far too obsessed with her ex, thinking of him and bringing him up in moments that had absolutely nothing to do with him. Her obsession with social media and like counts, so much so that she was thinking of using her nieces to try and lure the big monster, was grating. I just couldn’t get into her as a character at all.

The First House had a really interesting premise and some extraordinarily creepy moments, but it moves at a snail pace for most of the book and the main character was so annoying, it made the story drag longer than it should.