The House on the Corner

The House on the Corner
by Andrew Leon
(3/5 stars)

This starts off like the stereotypical haunted house story.  The Howard family (Air Force master sergeant Will, his wife Claire, 12-year-old Tom, 10-year-old Sam, and 6-year-old Ruth) move from Denver to Shreveport, Louisiana.  The house they move into is old and spooky-looking with a lot of flaking paint, dusty, and overly large rooms.  Some of those rooms have strange things in them.  Oh, and the house's last inhabitants disappeared.

So through 40% of the book I kept waiting for there to be the bumps in the night and such that you would expect in a haunted house story.  But then the book does a 180 from that and becomes more like "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."  There becomes a lot of talk about fairies, Guardians, Towers, wizards, and a magic sword.  Which is a little surprising because there are so many Star Wars references.

The book gets much more interesting once that stuff comes into play.  Unfortunately at that point there's only 60% off.  I think the author bit off more than he could chew at that point.  It made for a rushed ending that wasn't extremely satisfying to me.

Also, the book is in dire need of a real editor.  A lot of typos.  Also, I'm not fond of authors who use the word "suddenly" a lot.

There are still a lot of good things about this book.  The first-person narration between Tom, Sam, and Ruth is a little confusing at first but gets easier as it goes on.  I liked the kids, especially Sam and Ruth.  The relationship between the kids was well-drawn.  And once the book really gets going it's hard to put down--or shut off the Kindle.

That is all.