This title has been selected for coverage in Fangoria's October 2023 print edition. Please reach out to the reviewer directly for a PDF of the write-up (upon completion).

Jo Nesbo has ventured away from his typical mystery/detective stories by writing a gripping horror novel.

Fourteen year old Richard moves to his aunt and uncle’s house in the small town of Ballantyne after his parents are killed in a house fire. As the new kid in town and an outcast in school, Richard is blamed for the disappearance of his classmate Tom. Richard’s outlandish story about the disappearance is not believed by the police or his aunt and uncle. Since no one believes him, Tom and his new friend, Karen, decide to investigate for themselves as more eerie events develop.

I found the unreliable narrator to be confusing at first but the author wraps it up nicely at the end. Covering spooky elements like black magic and haunted houses, the tension builds and makes this book hard to put down. Fans of Steven King will love this quick and suspenseful read.

Thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage & Anchor and NetGalley for the advanced copy in return to my honest review.

The beginning was creepy. Atmospheric with the gothic house. Very strong. Midway through it began to lose me. The writing became weird and uninteresting. The ending is by far the worse.

📖: The Night House
⭐️: 3/5
⚠️: mental health disorders, death, house fire, cursing, bullying, psychotic episodes, cannibalism, general violence

THIS REVIEW HAS SPOILERS.

First off, I love naming the MMC Richard because he is, in fact, a dick. Secondly, this novel has aspects of horror, but it reads more like a psychological thriller. The whole story was made up under the premise the MMC has psychosis from PTSD. He takes aspects rom real life and weave them into his psychosis episodes. I feel if those episodes were more frequent and more detailed, it would elevate the horror aspect. I loved the descriptions of what episodes were included— a killer phone eating someone into another universe, a mob trying to kill/cannibalize the MMC as revenge for his misdeeds, hallucinating seeing a hung body. All of these are great horror references! I wish that was explored more. I also feel a certain type of way of the magic being referred to as “black word” or “white word”. It feels slightly juvenile. Maybe that was a way of showing the lack of maturity in the MMC. However, I feel the widely used “black/white magic” would have sufficed. Also, found it strange that certain characters deemed Metamorphosis and LOTF to be “hard reads, even for adults”. Both of those books are read by many middle schoolers. Overall, this is a good read for anyone wanting to dip their toe into the horror genre. A good beginners book for horror.

Oh, man... this was trippy! 4.25 stars.

This is a classic multi-layered horror novel, getting scarier the further you read, and the closer you get to the truth.

Because is there anything more terrifying than the truth?

No spoilers, but a note on the writing style. Just stick with it! What it took for poor translation early on (sorry I doubted you, Neil) was actually a masterful stroke that helps you progress thru the story. That being said, it nearly made me give up on it.

My perseverance was rewarded, as Nesbø comes thru with a deeply unsettling horror debut.

My thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A reader can pick up almost any novel by Jo Nesbo and feel confident that the story is worth the investment of time, thought, and money. The Night House is a prime example of expecting a detective/mystery noir for which he is most famous and realizing quickly that the novel is also a terrifying tale of age-old black magic targeting young teenagers. Nesbo uses several tropes to heighten the suspense: mirrors and self, word magic, palindromes, cryptic names and references, and best of all, the haunted house. A few of the themes are the nature of reality, friendship and love, heroic quest, can imagination be an indicator of mental illness, what and how does PTSD affect teenagers.
The narrator, Richard, is 14-15 at the start of the novel. He self-describes as a loner and a bully who has recently moved in with foster parents after his parents died in a fire. He harasses a fellow school mate, Tom, to follow him into the woods where he convinces Tom to make a prank phone call to a name seemingly pulled at random from a phone book. The prank turns tragic when the phone eats Tom. As Richard tries to explain truthfully what happened to Tom, how he disappeared, he becomes aware that the evil is increasing in intensity. And that, dear reader, is just the first 20 pages or so.
Initially I thought this was an extremely well-crafted YA novel disguised as adult fiction. Chronology and devices were sometimes implausible however that fit in with YA imagination. Nesbo carefully constructs a slow build of Richard's teen world view that I was totally unprepared for the intense build of part 2. Boy Howdy, this is not a YA novel. It is definitely one of the best novels I've read this year.
Thank you NetGalley for the advance proof.

This book totally freaked me out! It was scary and gripping. I couldn’t put it down! A must read for anyone who enjoys a good thriller!

I have enjoyed Nesbø’s crime fiction, and so was very excited to see him jump into horror headfirst. This novel rushes by, it is a ton of fun to read and I devoured the whole thing in a day (granted, it isn’t super long). It is hard to say too much without giving away some of the interesting twists and turns and revelations that come later in the book, but I obviously had fun with the story. I enjoyed the tension and how clearly unreliable the narrator was, and you could really feel those mystery/crime writing chops adapt themselves to explore something a little different. There were also some Stephen King vibes, which is always fun. By the end it is clear that the things I disliked about the novel as I read through it were somewhat intentional, and those choices made sense when the full picture is revealed. This is all well and good, and I appreciated it at the end, but it made some of the getting-there less pleasurable. For instance, the characters were, for the most part, sketches. They were ideas instead of being fully realized. This isn’t true across the board and there were interesting details to give some more substance or depth to some of them, but if you like to be totally invested in character-centric stories this will not do it for you. Similarly, some of the early plot resolutions feel too neat and easy, not quite lazy deus-ex-machina reveals but close to it, and these make perfect sense by the end, why everything played out the way it did, but at those moments I was left wanting a little more. It is a struggle to really think of how to rate this book, for those reasons.

By the final page, when the pieces slot together, you realize how well-crafted they each is, but that isn’t always enough if I was frustrated through the journey. In the end I thought it was well-paced and fun, had some really great scenes and imagery, and kept me unbalanced in a good way, not sure where or how it was going to swerve, which I always find refreshing. Ultimately it is kind of a disposable story, I don’t imagine it will linger with me, but I did have a good time reading it, like I said, in a single day because the writing was so compelling and the action so well-paced. If you like the twists and turns of a good mystery or thriller but you want to see them play out in a horror context that doesn’t really let you feel too comfortable with your handle on where the story is going, this is great fun and worth checking out.

I want to thank the author, the publishers Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Special thanks to Sharp, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I'm sorry to say that about 25% in, it just wasn't the book for me and with the very mixed reviews, I decided to skip it. It wasn't food me.

I just couldn’t get into this book. A young boy, with very little friends, new to a small town,who sees his friend get swallowed by a pay phone. His interaction with the two people who were raising him. Sorry to say, I didn’t finish it.

This was filled with so much derogatory language I didn't finish it. The horror aspect seemed like it was going to be really cool but that just took me out of it too much. There are entire pages where abolish, fatphobia, and other derogatory language is most of the page. The author tries to excuse it by saying that he tries to make people dislike him. Outside of that being incredibly problematic he thinks a lot of these derogatory things to himself. It doesn't make sense. It sounds like an excuse to have a derogatory, bigoted narrator. Its gross and it ruined what seemed to be a good story. Also our narrator doesn't seem to care about anyone around him. While he does have trauma that may attribute to having walls up. it wasn't written well into the book.

There were two things that drew me to this book -

1. It’s written by Jo Nesb0. I’ve been a fan for a long time.
2. The cover. It gave me those nostalgic, old-school horror vibes!

If the cover is any inclination, the contents match perfectly. This short , 256 page novel read like a ghost story that you’d tell around a campfire back when you were a kid.

The book is broken into three parts. I was in a constant state of “what the hell?!” until part three when you get the “aha” moment and things start to make sense. You think.

This was campy and reminiscent of Stephen King stories that I read as a kid. It was a great read.

This isn't what you think it is. Or maybe you already know? It's a horror story in all ways that matter and clearly also very much about trauma. It's got some twists and is a pretty quick read.

The Night House by Jo Nesbo is a modern day Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale. Dark and moody. All the elements are there. An orphan boy. Missing children. A haunted house deep along a wooded path.

Richard Elauved is a young teenager, new in town and cast as an outsider. His one friend, a girl named Karen is a bit of an enigma. Smart and well liked but prefers to be on her own. She’s the only one who believes Richard when spins his seemingly tall tales about the disappearance of his two mates. One eaten by a phone and the other turned into a bug.

The story deepens as the two find out more of the town’s history and Imu Jonasson who was a former resident of the sinister house but got institutionalized years ago. With no one in the town believing his story, young Richard must be his own detective and follow this story to its end.

Of course a fairy tale is often only a reflection of the life and time of the person who penned ir - and that may be even more horrifying.

I found the tale intriguing. It’s a quick read and filled with sinister undertones and things that go bump in the night.

#TheNightHouse #JoNesbo #Knopf #NetGalley #spooky

The cover drew me in and I started reading right away. I have to be honest that I was a little underwhelmed. Sure, this is definitely horror and there was plenty of sinister shenanigans throughout but I felt it was a little far-fetched (yes, yes, I know it’s horror but..) and I just didn’t love the ending. Creepy, yes. Scary, yeah. Just not my cup of tea.

The Night House A novel by Jo Nesbo pulled me in because of the stunning cover. However, after watching reviews and attempting to read the novel I have decided to not check it out. I hope that this book is for someone else, but it is not for me. Thank you for the early copy!

📞 This book wasn’t even remotely what I expected. I should clarify… it was exactly what I expected until the end and then it became a different book entirely. I haven’t decided yet if I am happy about that or upset to be honest. The ending did make me stop and contemplate everything I just read in this book, and then completely reevaluate the entire story from a different perspective. That was a unique experience.

📞 I honestly can’t say much else about this book without ruining it. It is definitely horror and very strange. There are some crazy, weird things going on and some truly disturbing scenes. But it is also way more than just a horror. Honestly, this is the ultimate unreliable narrator book... and it just might be genius.

📞 When I finished the last page, I was thinking that this story is sort of like if The Wizard of Oz was a horror novel. Good luck figuring that one out!

📞 I think purist horror fans may dislike this book more than casual horror readers because it doesn’t follow the typical horror formula at all. But I thought it was quite a ride and I’m glad I read it.

Thank you @NetGalley and @aaknopf for an eARC of this book, which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

Thank you for the advance copy of this but this really wasn’t my cup of tea. I loved her book The Snowman but this read more to me like a Stephen King novel, which are very hit and miss for ‘em.

The Night House was a decent book, but it wasn’t great. I think it’s because the story was set in three different parts, but the twists didn’t really surprise me. This particular type of story has been done numerous times—and the ending was completely ridiculous (even if it wasn’t true, there’s NO way she would have asked him that.)

One thing I did note is that the character of “Fatso,” which never should have been a character’s name, brought together elements of the two fictional books the narrator tried to read. As to calling someone “Fatso,” what we read has an impression on us. If we keep reading books that make fun of people for being fat, that’s what we, as a society, are going to think is okay. Please stop doing this.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

Not for me. Did not connect with the characters or story. Might be that some aspects were lost in translation. Could work for others if they find the premise interesting.