Review: The Night House

The Night House by Jo Nesbø
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

“H-h-h-he said that you and I . . .” He cupped his hand over the speaking end of the receiver to stop the person at the other end from hearing. “W-w-w-we’re going to—” 

“Tom!” I cried. “Your hand! Drop the phone!” Tom looked down and only now realized that his fingers were halfway through the holes in the receiver. 

The Night House was a standalone story with horror and psychological thriller elements divided up into three parts. Told all from Richard's point-of-view, the first part brings readers in when he's fourteen and has recently moved in with his aunt and uncle, now his foster parents, from a big city to small town Ballantyne. He's not part of the popular crowd and as such, has a bit of edge to him, where he does a little bullying himself, except with classmate Karen, who he has a bit of a crush on. When him and Tom, a boy who is on the outskirts himself because of his stuttering, come upon a phone booth on the edge of the woods, the story takes a horrific turn as Tom is gruesomely sucked into the phone receiver after dialing the number for a Imu Jonasson. 

“I know. But sometimes if you tell a lie enough times, it becomes a bit true anyway.” 

This first part takes up more than half the book and follows Tom as he's accused and looked upon as Tom's murderer and when another classmate goes missing, an FBI agent becomes involved. The only one who believes Tom is Karen and she starts her own investigation into what is happening. Tom goes from finding Imu Jonasson's “Night House” in the woods to ending up at a correctional facility for young people, where he learns that Imu Jonasson was also a patient, learning about black word and white word magic, and then eventually escaping with a set of psychotic twins. The first part wraps up with a battle scene to save Karen's life and sort of happy ending that leaves you wondering where the next forty percent of the book is going to go. 

Something moved up by the window. I looked up. A face. Pale. The expressionless face of a man, as motionless as a painting. A face I had never seen before, yet which still gave me a strange feeling of looking in a mirror. 

The second part spins the whole story on it's head and jumps fifteen years in the future to Richard coming back to Ballantyne for his highschool reunion. He's a famous young adult author after the great success of one of his books “The Night House”, which has also been optioned as a movie. Readers start to get a sense of unreliable narrator with a little bit of Wizard of Oz-ness, as characters appear with slightly different roles than had been presented in, what we now know, was Richard's book we were reading. There's a break through scene where Richard has an emotional breakdown with Karen and he tells her about why he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, his parents died in a fire. After this story and the reunion party moves to a new Night House, the story starts to spin back to where readers thought it originally was and I got a sense of King's It and the horror comes back into play, only to be spun once again in part three. 

“As far as I know, Imu Jonasson hasn’t lived in Ballantyne since he was committed to an institution. And that was decades ago.” 

“Did he do something wrong?” 

“Oh yes, but not before something wrong was done to him.” 

There were a couple clues in part two about where part three was headed and the story ultimately turns into more of an emotional psychological thriller. The last fifteen percent was more emotional than I expected and I want to say that if you find yourself getting very dizzy from the first two parts, hang on because the third part will complement the first two and make the ride worth while (I can see some horror readers being disappointed). I did feel myself gripping the sides of the book, ready to be spun again, but the ending left with a looking good moment, for now. The first part's horror was engrossing even when it felt the wheels were coming off and the second part's wheels did come off but spun just in time to the emotional third and last part ending. I enjoyed the meaning behind the name Imu and the context of how it ultimately tied into Richard's character and once again, the story reminding us that true horror comes from human nature. 

He laughed. “You should never trust your memory. It only ever gives you what it thinks you need. So . . . well, in that sense maybe it’s just as well to trust it after all.” He laughed again.

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