This is completely my fault for going into this thinking it was going to be a horror book without really knowing what this book is about. The book is about a true crime writer who moves into the house of where the crimes took place he is writing about. It follows the process of writing true crime. I ended up DNFing this book. I started getting extremely confused as the book is very literary and begins switching between 1st and 2nd person and also past, present, and another storyline. The other storyline is about the crimes that happened from his first book and it completely lost me and had nothing to do with the other storyline. I was genuinely so confused reading this book and got annoyed with the constant use of “you” in every sentence. This is mostly my fault though because I thought this book was something that it wasn’t so be aware of that going into this. It’s not for everyone but some people might enjoy this if this is more their thing.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC copy of this book.

An introspective study on authorship and the ripple effect of true crime narrative on its participants, if you're in the mood for fragmented slowburn and cyclical analysis, Devil House will reward you with thought-provoking commentary on the power of storytelling.

First and foremost, Devil House is not a horror novel, no matter how much its devilish title and the eye-catching cover art suggests otherwise; it is firmly rooted in true crime, with a heavy literary fiction flair — make sure you set your expectation accordingly going in.

I was fully engaged by the shifting perspectives put forth in Devil House: from the role of the author, real-life people who lived through the crime (and the media surrounding it), to glimpses of what truly happened, before being molded into an expected 'true crime narrative'. Telling story is never a truly objective, unbiased act; we pick side to favor, twist truth to heighten drama, even fabricate fact for countless reasons — all these are the foundational concepts explored in the novel. While I admire the obsessively detailed writing style, it does stun the overall flow; this is a novel more suited for periodic savoring (the book is divided into several big sections), rather than compulsively turning pages. It also could've used 1 more round of editing; as some of its lengthy tangents come across like white noise rather than constructive to its core message.

Overall, Devil House brings you deep into the working mind of a true crime writer, and the experience is overall a memorable one. It would be a cautious recommendation from me, primarily for its drawn-out pacing and unpindownable tone (at times deeply observational, but also fantastical?); worth a try if you're feeling adventurous.

I will admit, I chose this book partly because of the fantastic cover. I thought it sounded kinda like an Amityville-type story and I was not correct in that, but this worked out just fine because the twists and turns were very worth the ride! I love books that travel through time and perspectives, so this was really a good choice for my taste. Sometimes it feels even like the reader is being led around in circles or not quite getting it, but keep reading because this author has a reason and a purpose and there is a method to the madness. This wasn't doing what I expected and nothing was as it seemed to be- which I loved. The basic description is that the main character Gage is a true crime writer who is offered the chance to move into the home the locals dubbed ”Devil House." Some murders took place there in the 80’s, Gage is very excited to get to work. However, his research leads him down a rabbit hole revealing things about himself he never saw coming. To say anything else would spoil an exciting ride and I will not do that- just read this. Read no other reviews. Go in blind,.

Devil House is the story of a crime writer who, in order to get a better feel for the story, moves into the house where the series of murders he is investigating happened. I liked following the writer and reading about his investigative methods for tracking down a story; however, the book flashes between the present, the past when the murders occur, and a third storyline of his first true crime murder investigation and it starts to get confusing. This is where the book started to meander and lose me. I just felt like every time I picked up the book, it took over a dozen pages to try to get back into the rhythm of it. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A novel about a true crime writer who sets out to write about an unsolved murder during the Satanic Panic 1980's, Devil House also serves as a mediation on true crime writing itself: its aims, it's methods, and it's repercussions on both its writer and its subjects.

The shifting, sometimes disjointed narrative of Devil House is both a positive and a negative. At times it adds to the sense of building dread and foreboding, at other times it is a cause for frustration and makes it hard to connect to the characters and their stories. But the strengths of Darneille's deliberate and evocative prose outweigh the negatives and the book is compelling, even as it keeps you always slightly off-kilter.

Full disclosure: I am a huge TMG fan and a very ambivalent true crime fan, so DEVIL HOUSE was basically constructed for me in a literary laboratory. Every blurb notes this novel's ambition, for good reason -- Darnielle attempts (and pulls off) something very complex and formally daring. The novel defies summary, which is part of the point; it tells a story about true crime writer Gage Chandler, who is tasked with writing a book about 'Devil House,' where a gruesome unsolved murder took place during the Satanic Panic. And yet, it's also a story about telling stories, about what happens to the people involved (however peripherally) in a narrative when it gets set down in words. The payoff of the novel, which really comes after the halfway mark and crescendos in the final pages, is high, but less-intrepid readers might give up before getting there. This isn't a novel for those looking for a straightforward horror story or a true crime tale, but for people who are willing to go with Darnielle through some formal leaps and bounds to pick apart what it means to tell a story, it's an incredibly compelling, worthwhile read.

Devil House is the story of true crime writer Gage Chandler who gained notoriety when he published a book that was later adapted into a film called The White Witch of Morro Bay recounting the sensational crime of a teacher who murdered two of her students. When his publisher sends him a newspaper blurb about a grisly murder of 2 people that happened in the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980’s in a building that had housed an adult bookstore, Gage moves to Milpitas, California to research what he hopes will become his next book. Although years have past since the murders Gage buys the “Devil House” and beings to reconstruct the past both physically in the house and in the pages of his book.

As Darnielle peels back layer upon layer, the reader experiences the research process with Gage, unravels the history of the Devil House and Adult Monster X, learns the story of Diana Crane, the White Witch herself all leading to one hell of a fantastic ending!


This book will not be for everyone (it is certainly not capital H horror as the title implies) but it was like nothing I have ever read before. It is much longer than Darnielle’s previous novels Wolf in White Van and Universal Harvester (both of which I loved) but his writing style is lyrical and gorgeous which should come as no surprise as he is a songwriter. The writing is so good that even though the book’s format

I was unable to finish this book as every time I left the book., the next time I opened the book it was back on the first page.

Where do I start? I thought this was gonna be one thing and it turned out to be something different. This book is written in a unique way. Divided in different sections, there were times when I thought what am I reading? Did I miss something?

Gage Chandler a true crime writer is offered the chance to move into the home the locals dubbed ”Devil House”. The scene of a couple of murders committed in the 80’s, Gage cannot wait to begin his work. However, his research leads him down a rabbit hole revealing things about himself he never saw coming.

I think this is one of those books you have to read for yourself. You will either love it or hate it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc.

Wow, this was great. There's a nested structure that works really well for how the book wants to analyze how we tell "true crime" stories and how that's one perspective on events, and John Darnielle does a great job of making this feel like multiple true cases instead of the fiction it all is. There's a big swing taken in the middle section that I'm not sure fully connects, but I respect him making it.

John Darnielle is one of my favorite stars to think about. His life has been as wide ranging and unique as his music. He has been a psychiatric nurse, a drug addict, a musician, and a writer. As the Mountain Goats, he has written albums about everything from the work of French historian Pierre Chuvin to an album about professional wrestling. He is known for writing songs that tell stories and his lyrics very literary in nature. It is no surprise that he finds success with writing novels.

People really took notice of Darnielle’s writing when he wrote a 33 ⅓ book on Master of Reality by Black Sabbath. This book stands out in the series because it is not an essay on the album like the rest of the series. Master of Reality is a fictional narrative with the main character in a psychiatric ward trying to get his tape player back so he can listen to Black Sabbath. Darnielle found success with this book, and continued to write books and albums.

Devil House is his fourth book, and it is his most ambitious. The main character, Gage Chandler, is descended from kings, according to his mother, and he has found success as a true crime writer. He hears about the case of the Devil House murders in 1986, where a realtor and potential buyer are slain inside an abandoned porn shop. The novel splits between this narrative and a retelling of pieces of his first true crime book about the White Witch, a teacher who killed two of her students when they forced their way into her apartment. The threads between these stories are many, and most of Devil House is not about the plot at all. It is about Gage Chandler himself, as a writer, as an artist, as a storyteller, and as a human.

The book is broken into several different but related sections, and I cannot help but compare this to one of the the structure of a Mountain Goats concept album. The theme is the burdens and responsibilities that Gage has to bear by taking up the stories of others and retelling them through his own lens. Regardless of how neutral he tries to be, there is a perspective that he is conveying to the reader, and this is something that Gage Chandler really has to think about when he is constructing the whole story of the Devil House. In the end, Darnielle has written a novel that is more about big ideas on literature and art than about the actual plot and character. This honestly feels exactly how I expect any John Darnielle novel to feel. He is an artist who loves art and the meanings behind it, but sometimes he is more interested in the feelings that the art gives than the art itself. This is the substance of Devil House; he is telling a story about being an artist through telling the stories of grisly murders.

I received this ARC from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

In my defense, I thought this would be horror. Instead it's like a Russian doll, story within a story within a story with overlapping and sometimes confusing, repetitive narratives. I still loved the initial premise but it's a slow start for a book of any genre. I'm not sure why we got such an indepth look at the writer main character's writing process but I could've done without many of the backstories presented. I slowly began to realize, as I was reading that the writers method is the glue that holds a variety of plots together around the history of one house/lunch counter/porn store.

Gage was an incredibly dry character. I had trouble staying interested. In short this wasn't quite the book I thought it would be. History in a small town, Myth and gossip surrounding decrepit structures, and true crime vs sensationalized journalism all fit as snippets for this story better than the haunted house book that I wanted it to be. The ending does bring it together and I'm sure there are readers who will love this book but sadly it wasn't for me.

How do you tell a story? What do you put in or leave out? How should events be ordered? Who is the narrator? Every author has to answer these questions and more but, as John Darnielle shows us in Devil House, the authors of true crime stories have additional questions they have to wrestle with: how to portray the victims and the perpetrators; where to center the story; where to assign the blame; the legacy of the crime; and on. All of these questions swirl around true crime writer Gage Chandler in this book, getting in the way of his next project and forcing him to reconsider everything he thought he knew about telling terrible stories.

The pitch Gage gets from his editor is a slight twist on his usual formula. What Gage usually does is a combination of secondary research and interviews to capture the place and time of a crime on top of all the gory details. This time, his editor wants him to buy and move into the house where two people were brutally killed in the mid-1980s. At the time, the house was a recently closed porn shop, to add to the salaciousness of the whole thing. The house has been on and off the market ever since and has just come back up for sale again. Ashton, the editor, tells Gage this is the perfect next step for a new project. After some hemming and hawing, Gage takes the house and starts to work on recreating what happened more than a decade before.

It seems perfectly reasonable at the outset. The case has the same sort of local mythos that made his first book such a smash. The house/porn store was an embarrassment in its little town. When the store went out of business, it very briefly became a clubhouse for a group of teenagers who transformed the place into what sounds like the kind of extraordinary art project that adults just wouldn’t understand. After two people are killed on the premises, the rumor mill went into overtime, fueled by Satanic panic talk, strange rituals, a sword for a murder weapon—but no one was ever arrested in the case, much less charged and put on trial.

Gage is able to get his hands on some of the police records and evidence in the case. He tracks down some of the people who might have been involved. And yet, the story refuses to coalesce into a clear narrative. True crime usually follows a couple of formulas, but it’s usually pretty clear from the beginning whodunit. But Gage can’t figure out what happened. The more he digs, the less he seems to know about what happened at Monster Adult X. Instead of giving us a straight-forward narrative, Gage tries to put himself into the heads of the teenagers who transformed the porn store and might have murdered two people who walked into the transformed store, planning on flipping the property. We get a string of incomplete narratives that wander up and down the spectrum of veracity from probably true to outright fantasy. The twists at the end further transform this narrative into something profoundly thoughtful and unexpected.

This book is a puzzle. I’m not sure that I liked it, per se, but I very much appreciate the questions the narrator raises about what kind of story should be told, the stories audiences want, and the differences between the two. It looks very closely at who deserves to have their stories told by constantly zooming out to explain how victims and perpetrators came to find themselves in the same place, at the same time, in fatal circumstances. Above all, I think, Devil House says a lot about not rushing to judgment, even when we think we know everything we need to know.

So this isn’t a horror story or even really a thriller if you ask me. Started out slow but once it got going it does hold your interest. Everything intrigued me from the blurb to the concept and it didn’t hold up to what I expected. It’s as if there are two different voices and storylines happening within one story. You are left wondering and contemplating what is going on but at the same time wanting to possibly read it again for something that you may have missed. It’s interesting for sure and one you should give a shot.

My husband is a big Mountain Goats fan, so we decided to read this book together and compare our opinions. Unfortunately, I DNF this book. Still waiting to hear what he thinks about it though…

This is the story of Gage Chandler. A somewhat successful true crime writer. He is investigating the house (Devil House) where a couple grisly murders happened in the 1980s. The house has been completely remodeled and refurbished since the crime occurred, but Chandler still wants to immerse himself in the house’s history and lore and the town of Milpitas, California. He does that by moving into the Devil House to try and decipher its secrets.

The Devil House had been several things. Most recently (in 1986) it was an abandoned sex shop-turned-secret lair by two high school kids, Derek and Seth. Derek worked at the shop before it abruptly closed. He found that his security code still worked on the alarm, so he used the shop (with all the pornographic paraphernalia still in it) as a quiet space to hang out and draw. His friend Seth joins him, and they make the store into an occult-like lair where eventually the double murder happens. (Chandler is trying to figure out exactly what happened on that night.)

Also, there is the story of Diana Crane, known as The White Witch of Morro Bay, and her victims. Her crimes are the subject of Chandler’s first book and wholly unrelated to the story line about The Devil House. These two stories were being told simultaneously and I was confused as to why The White Witch needed to be included in this book at all. It seemed superfluous, unnecessary, and didn’t really do anything to move the plot forward.

The thing that really hampered my enjoyment of this book and really disappointed me is that it was not a horror novel. From the description, I had been expecting a haunted house-type horror/mystery novel à la Home Before Dark by Riley Sager or White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson. The description and cover art really made it seem like it was the house itself that was evil and haunting, not the crimes that it housed. If anything, this novel was about “how to write a true crime novel” and “criminal lore of California mid-size towns.” Once I figured out that there was no “haunting” (supernatural or not), I pretty much lost all interest.

I also thought that the novel was too wordy and could be confusing at times (I tapped out at the Song of Gorbonian part). It was excessively literary, in my opinion, but if you’ve actually listened to The Mountain Goats you’d see that it was pretty on-brand for John Darnielle. Though I personally didn’t care for this book doesn’t mean that it is a bad book. The concept is interesting and I’m sure people who are more into literary true crime/mystery novels will enjoy this quite a bit. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t my bag.

Compelling and reminiscent of pulp thrillers, Devil House probes at the boundary between truth and the narratives constructed around those truths. True crime writer Gage Chandler struggles discovering what is true and what makes a compelling story with the case of Satanic panic and the Devil House. What he finds, though, will stir memories of his past writings and their real-life characters. An examination of obsession with true crime and the privilege of whose stories are told, Devil House is immersive, speculative horror not to be missed.

I love when a book feels different and doesn't fit into one particular genre, and Devil House certainly fits the bill. I stepped into it thinking it would be a straightforward horror story, but there was plenty of mystery and literary fiction mixed in - and even different sections written in first, second, and third person. It felt like I won literary bingo!

The plot focused on Gage Chandler, a true crime mystery writer that had a few moderate successes, but for his next pursuit, he dove much closer and deeper. He moved into the locally dubbed "Devil House", a former pornography store turned into a Satanic scene in 1986 where two individuals were brutally murdered.

I found this book really unusual but ultimately quite entertaining. A few sections felt unnecessary (I don't totally understand the purpose of the "descended from kings" storyline), but the writing was terrific and I'm curious to check out other works from Darnielle.

This is an ambitious novel that tackles the familiar trope of a narrative within a narrative and it is mostly successful. I expected this to be a horror novel,. but this is contemporary fiction with some misleading marketing.

True crime has been a fascination of mine for a few years now. What motivates people to do something so truly horrific and awful that it's rippling effects can be felt in a community for years to come? And with that, what personal ethics and morals come with covering such crimes via book form or visual media? John Darnielle delves into these questions with grace and wisdom, while also covering so much more.

To start, this is NOT a horror novel. Despite the name, cover, and blurb, it leans more into a sort of dramatic thriller which, given the content, works in the favor of Devil House.

We start off following our "lead" character, a true crime writer named Gage Chandler who, from the suggestion of management, buys the aptly named Devil House to write a new book off of a horrific murder that occurred there. It's from here that we get to see just how truly devastating Satanic Panic can be to the mindset of a small town, especially when gossip and word of mouth spreads like wildfire.

But this isn't our full focus. From here we switch narrators, mostly told in the 2nd-person, from a teacher living in the house from some years ago, a group of friends who end up inhabiting an abandoned porn store, and the mother of a teen that lost his life in a gruesome fashion. It mostly works, minus a Part (4 or 5, I can't remember which) where we delve into a sort of "fantasy-esque" story telling in order to lessen the blow of a horrific crime in real time. This is where I was pulled out of the story and didn't really enjoy the execution, though it's also one of the shortest sections.

There were many moments towards the end which pulled on my emotions and left me feeling a deep sorrow. It's beautifully done and the more I read, the more I felt for these characters and their problems.

Darnielle, even in the controversial Universal Harvester, really knows how to grasp the feeling of nostalgia without it feeling unnatural and awkward. It's a real feeling of longing and want for something long past but not just for feelings of sentimentality, but for how carefree it all felt at the time, even during physical and emotional turmoil.

I feel like there will be a lot of disappointed readers who will, unfortunately, judge this book by its cover and find it to be a story where nothing happens and drags. However, if you let the narrative take you away and look outside of the realm of horror, you'll find that John Darnielle is a wizard when it comes to realism and character.

Massive thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this novel.

Perfectly named true crime writer Gage Chandler has a somewhat unconventional approach to research. While most writers argue research should be done impartially, uncritically, Chandler gets right into the lives of the people he studies. In fact, he’s moved into the house where the grisly murders of his current project occurred some years before. DEVIL HOUSE works in multiple modes and genres to assemble its story—bits of interviews, excerpts from previous works, Chandler’s own narration, John Darnielle assembles and presents it all so skillfully for his reader that it’s easy to pretend you’re the one sifting through this pile of primary and secondary source material to uncover the story therein.

Darnielle’s newest work has everything you want from a book called DEVIL HOUSE, but it’s also warm and thoughtful, carefully nostalgic without being saccharine or precious with its characters. It feels, in a lot of ways, like a kind of Stand by Me coming-of-age tale, through the lens of the true crime genre with which we’ve found ourselves so obsessed as of late.