Review: House of Echoes by Brendan Duffy

Summary:

Akin to Jennifer McMahon’s The Winter People and Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box, House of Echoes is a debut thriller populated by achingly sympathetic characters, charged with psychological suspense, and rich with a small town’s strange history.

A young New York City couple with a boy and a baby in tow, Ben and Caroline Tierney had it all…until Ben’s second novel missed the mark, Caroline lost her lucrative banking job, and something went wrong with 8-year-old Charlie. When Ben inherits land way upstate from his grandmother, the two of them began to believe in second chances. But upon arriving in Swannhaven, a town that seems to have been forgotten by time, they’re beset by strange sights and disconcerting developments…and they begin to realize they might have made their worst mistake yet. But what dark secret is buried in this odd place? And will Ben and Caroline figure it out soon enough to save their young family?

Publication Date: April 14, 2015

This was a good debut with a few twists I never saw coming. I liked the creepy rural atmosphere and the mysteries surrounding the property inherited by Ben and Caroline.

The characters were good enough and I liked how they had that everyman sort of appeal. I could picture any family reacting the same way they had to the horrors they encounter after their move.

The pace was a little slow for me, but I think the author intended to gradually build the tension in the story. However, I felt like some mundane details about the couple’s life could’ve been left out to make the story flow better.

The animal mutilation stuff freaked me out and the author did make me think several times the book was going in a totally different direction than I expected. He definitely made good use of red herrings. The ending wasn’t bad, but not exactly how I saw the plotline being tied up.

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of the novel for review!