Reviews with content warning for Vomit - There's Someone Inside Your House

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There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins

9 reviews

cady_sass's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.25

I am so mad at myself for finishing this book. This had every reason to be a DNF, but I convinced myself that there was a huge twist coming and it never did.

The killer is revealed a little more than halfway in. I should’ve stopped there. But it was so early?! Surely it can’t be that simple? Alas, surely it can. And SO BORING and lackadaisical in the reveal too. For what? Oh, and the mysterious and dark and super top secret backstory of our main character that they hint towards the whole time? Huge let down, entirely irrelevant, and the actual core of the problem with that backstory is never addressed, at all, by any character even in the present. On top of that, all of the characters are unlikable (not in a good / on purpose way) or are completely random (as in, I don’t care about them or know anything about them) so the whole time you’re either like “ugh” or “who? Am I supposed to care?”

I feel so swindled. 1 star for the body horror and sorta graphic murdering, moderately impressive for a YA thriller.

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rosesofthespring's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's tense, it's challenging, and I ended up really liking the characters. Stephanie Perkins has a knack for making characters feel multi-dimensional in a short time, which is invaluable for the slasher genre. It makes the escapes feel earned, and the deaths feel like a true loss. I was surprised to learn that this was published before The Woods Are Always Watching, since I feel like this one avoids the pitfalls that bothered me in The Woods.

I hope we get to see more horror from Perkins in the future.

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aformeracceleratedreader's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

4.5

Knocking off half a star because the ending was not what I wanted and I'm not huge on white authors writing main characters that are poc (although this one was fairly well written compared to other poc written by white authors).

Spoiler

the fact Ollie is actually alive feels kind of...meh. like too happy an ending? When her friend was nearly fully decapted and murdered, her other friend seriously stabbed, another girl with a sliced thigh, and Makani gets to keep a boyfriend who apparently is more important than her critically injured friend? It would've been better if he didn't make it for me. Especially since the injured surviving friend kind of did a miracle "saves the day" kind of move to help our main girl deal the final blow. which was going to already make the end a happy-ish ending without "oh my god the boy I've only know for 3 months and am unhealthily obsessed with is alive!!!" Does that make me a jerk? Maybe

Overall though, super good thriller/slasher. Love and hate small Midwest town settings as someone from a small Midwest town. Seriously gave me the creeps because the setting is so similar to where I'm at. Read this is one day. Stayed up super late to finish it. Kind of gives me some similar vibes to The Mary Shelley Club. I would be willing to read more from this author 100%. Def check content/trigger warnings tho.

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bookedandbusy's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I enjoyed this book! I feel like the killer was revealed too early in the book though, and it took some of the suspense away. It didn’t slow down though, which was nice!

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theshrew'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? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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tkatt20's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I needed a quick and interesting read and this book delivered. It read exactly like some of my favorite teen slasher films and had me devouring every page as the tension grew. The first 50 or so pages read more like a contemporary romance and was not what I was expecting but I stuck with it and and very quickly realized how necessary it was to lure you into a false sense of security. All of the characters were extremely well written and diverse. Each major character especially had their own trauma and flaws but it wasn't an excuse for the characters to be irrationally rude or unpleasant, which seems to be a trend with YA books I've read in the past. Every character seemed extremely fleshed out (no pun intended) and had their own personality and I was so shocked at how accurately this book portrayed the media and community response to the tragedies that were happening and how screwed up it was.

I highly recommend this book for any horror/slasher movie fans out there. Some other reviews mention that the killer' motive wasn't realistic and ended up being disappointing but I didnt get that at all. I was very realistic to me and terrifying since it shows that you never really know what goes on in someones head. There was a perfect balance of heart-pounding scenes and lighter and funnier moments in between so nothing became to over or underwhelming and the writing style was perfect for me. I loved these characters and if the author ever decided to bring them back for future books I would be first in line for a copy.

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voidboi's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

When this book was announced, I felt some disappointment that one of my favorite YA authors was moving into a genre that I wasn't particularly interested in, and I never got around to reading it. In retrospect, I'm glad that I didn't, because now I was able to read it with a fairly newfound appreciation for horror and slashers. This book is suspenseful and gory, but it still has qualities of Stephanie Perkins' work that I have always loved- Makani is real, relatable, flawed, and self-aware just as the author's heroines always are (which I found particularly refreshing and comforting as a teenager, because I always knew she took her readers seriously), but she's distinctly her own self. The honesty in how the romance is approached, by the characters and in the writing, feels particularly strong for the genre, again in line with Stephanie's track record. I didn't feel quite the same "swept off my feet" emotions as I did with Anna, Lola, and Isla, probably because it was replaced by apprehension and paranoia- I couldn't quite trust anything for the majority of the book. That said, I think the relationship was developed incredibly well, and I was utterly engrossed.

I do have a few complaints. I felt that Darby and Alex were underdeveloped and somewhat cartoon-y, and I wish they'd gotten past that before the end. I also thought that the reveal of Makani's past was a bit anti-climactic. Reading about what she'd been put through was horrific (though a bit weirdly formatted), but in the end what she actually did just paled in comparison to to actual bad things in her past and present, and it seemed unrealistic that the response would have been so world-ending for her.

Spoiler

Honestly, if Jasmine had actually died I think it would have hit home, and created a stronger conflict between victimhood and guilt.

And the end of the book felt very abrupt. It needed either a little less or a little more resolution.

This was a great spooky season read, and I'm so glad Steph Perkins was able to write this. Her voice is perfect for the messy and dark parts of adolescence.

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house_of_hannah's review

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Unfortunately, this really didn't feel like a thriller until the last 50 pages. Up until then it was a boring romance with a lot of teen drama thrown in. A good chunk of the book was just the two MCs, Makani and Ollie, trying to be alone to get into each other's pants. Pass.

The very first chapter is the first murder, so it starts off promising, but quickly tapers off. In this first chapter we get to see what is probably the best part of this book: the way the killer toys with the victim's minds. They are constantly doing things like opening drawers/cabinents, moving mundane objects, rearranging furniture, and other things like that to make the person second-guess themselves. I thought this was a really interesting aspect to the murders.

One thing that took me by surprise is that we discover the identity of the killer about half way through the story. It felt way too soon, and made the book feel longer than what it is. This combined with the abrupt ending, and Makani's "secret", just left the whole book feeling very unsatisfying.

Spoiler

But seriously, wtf was up with her secret ? They were being fucking hazed, and everyone was drunk/exhausted/pissed. Cutting someone's hair with a knife is pretty tame compared to everything else that was happening that night, and better some hair than someone's arm or something.

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sarah984's review

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funny tense fast-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? It's complicated

2.0

This book felt really amateurishly written, lots of telling us about people without showing anything (I already forget almost every character because you're just fed a paragraph of info about them and then they all act the same way) and tortured metaphors. The killer’s motivation is genuinely ridiculous, as is Makani’s "dark secret" and her romance with Ollie.

A few of the scares involving things being moved around in the houses were creepy, but overall this felt like it was trying to be a slasher and a romance and failing at both.

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