The House on Linden Way

If you want to know how to create a book that unsettles and unnerves the reader, pick up The House on Linden Way by Elizabeth Maria Naranjo. I’ll admit – when I volunteered for this blog tour, I was uncertain about the wisdom of my choice. I am not a huge horror fan and while this book didn’t seem to be guts and gore, it has that old school, horror vibe. It is all about creating a spooky, unsettling atmosphere and so often authors who strive to do this resort to gore.

I’m not going to say the book is blood free but what was there was essential and not extreme. This wasn’t about grossing out the reader.

Amber and her three-year-old daughter Bee are traveling cross country. Because they are in the area where Amber grew up, she decides to swing by the house so Bee can see it. Now, honestly? I’m not buying what she’s selling. This visit was for Amber’s benefit although she used her daughter as her excuse. Parents do this kind of thing all the time. I have a stack of art supplies and a disinterested son to prove that point.

Anyway, Amber knocks on the door to talk to the current owners who are an incredibly kind older couple. They welcome her and Bee in so that Amber can see the whom and prepare a snack for the pair. While the snack is in the works, Bee disappears.

I’m not going to discuss much more of the actual plot than that because the reader needs to experience the plot as it unfolds in the book. If I reveal too much, it will tamper with that experience.

Naranjo uses multiple elements to create an unsettling, unnerving story.

1. The disappearance of Bee. Anyone who has ever had a child slip away unnoticed is going to know how gut wrenching this experience is. To have it go one for days? That takes it to a whole new level.
2. Bee doesn’t just disappear. Amber is stuck in her own memories and initially has no idea how to release herself.
3. Amber has memories that she has banished. This is a great way to create an unreliable narrator. Because she won’t let herself think about them, they are not immediately in her mind even when she returns to her own past. This makes her surprise when things are revealed believable while also making the whole experience eerily unsettling.
4. The story is linear in that we experience things in the order that Amber experiences them in the present. She arrives at the house. She loses Bee. She experiences a jumble of memories. But those memories are not in chronological order. It is like someone shuffled the scene cards and it is an unsettling experience.

These are the elements that Naranjo employs instead of the blood and guts of your typical horror novel. Instead she presents the reader with an atmospheric, creepy experience that makes them question everything.

This is definitely a read I would recommend.

–SueBE