Reviews tagging 'Gore'

Twelve Nights at Rotter House by J.W. Ocker

14 reviews

archaicrobin's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

When it comes to horror, haunted house stories are my absolute favorite, and 12 Nights at Rotter House is now high up on my all time favorite haunted house book list.  I finished this book in two days because I just could NOT put it down! 

Felix is a struggling author looking for his big break onto the bestseller list. With a long history of writing spooky non-fiction he has his few readers but is looking for the perfect location to finally launch his career. Here comes Rotter House. Felix persuades the owner to let him stay in Rotter House for 13 nights, completely sequestered from the world. No electricity, no social media, no contact with the outside. Joining Felix on this project is his best friend Thomas whom he hasn’t spoken to in a year due to a falling out. As the two continue their stay, stranger and stranger things start to happen and soon Rotter House starts to pick at the secret that pulled these two friends apart. 

This one had a fun twist at the end and the journey there is a blast. If you love haunted house novels as much as me definitely try this one out! Loved it!!
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justnei's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

 i love a good meta story, and this one was chockfull of meta. i like the idea of acknowledging a genre's tropes. but most of the book was devoted to having the same conversations over and over again, with a ton of horror movie knowledge sprinkled in. this book was set in a haunted house and the main characters explicitly acknowledge that, and engage in many common horror tropes in order to write THE horror nonfiction novel of the decade. but the conversations between the characters got stale pretty quickly, and the spooks were cheap but effective. everything got RAMPED the fuck up in the last 100 or so pages, which were honestly my favourites of the book. mild spoiler/not spoiler ahead: 
i don't read a ton of pure horror fiction, so i did not see the final twist coming, and i loved it and also felt sick about it. i guessed a piece of it, but could not have fathomed the rest. i love thinking back on the book through the lens of that final twist. it turns the book into something much darker than initial glance.
  my biggest criticism of the book is the white male author takes on race and racism, and the author did it in a "i make my character say a racist thing which is called out as racist by my black character, thus making it not racist anymore, RIGHT???" kind of way which is kind of like patting yourself on the back for doing next to nothing. i would have rated this a generous 2 stars without the ending, but as a newbie to the genre beyond stephen king, i enjoyed it. 
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carekipland's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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glains's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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