Posts Tagged: Darkhouse

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Review: Darkhouse by Karina Halle

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Darkhouse
Karina Halle
Series: Experiment in Terror, #1
Publication date: March 10th 2012
by Metal Blonde Books

 

With all the vampire, werewolf and faerie books out there, it’s easy to become numb to all things supernatural. The antidote? Darkhouse introduces two real and unforgettable characters, Perry Palomino & Dex Foray, amateur ghost hunters who are “attractive, relatable and oddly heroic,” “flawed but loveable,” “slightly crazy” and just the most endearing pair to ever tackle the paranormal…just don’t call them normal. Darkhouse is a thrilling and sexy new take on concepts like Supernatural and The X-Files, bringing a breath of fresh air to a genre that has been inundated with the dead.

*A copy was provided by Karina Halle for review purposes*
Coming highly recommended by so many friends, I couldn’t resist from checking out this creeptastic looking series any longer. All you need to convince me, really, is to tell me it has ghosts–and these are not the sweet ghosts you can fall in love with either (which I will never be fond of), these are evil: truly and relentlessly evil.

Having been reading a lot of Young Adult novels, it was a nice change to get a protagonist that’s a bit older. At 22 years old, Perry is dealing with an unfulfilling job, a non existent sex life, and her bubbly teenage sister. Then she gets a pretty unexpected surprise when she goes to explore an old light house and something… more than normal, occurs. Talk about an exciting start! Not to mention this hot guy she happens to stumble upon–Dex. These characters are a lot of fun to go through this story with. They both have mysterious pasts that lends even more creepy to this story. Dex, especially, with his more than secretive personality. I was always on edge when he was around, yet somehow, I didn’t feel threatened, just highly suspicious. He has this bizarre aura that screams something is not right with this fella. Nonetheless, the two of them have a lot of chemistry, making this book very compelling in a lot of ways.

While the characters are endearing, it takes a little bit to get the story moving along. The pacing at the beginning wanders. Like I mentioned, it starts with a bang when something hugely creepy happens, but afterwards it slows down tremendously until the half way point. I wasn’t bored per say, mostly wondering where the plot was headed. Once we do reach the half way point, however, it’s a pretty fantastic and spine chilling ride until the end. There’s more than enough menacing encounters and strange discoveries to make up for the slower half. If it was not the first in a series, though, I would have been disappointed by the lack of answers from both the characters’ lives and the plot. We don’t get very deep into the mysteries surrounding everything, but knowing there are a lot more books to follow, it simply makes me indefinitely curious for answers. Everything is so cryptic and perplexing, it’s certainly feeding our thirsts for mysteries and the unexplained.

From terrifying old ladies (I mean, she stares! Creepily! And that’s just creepy!), to adrenaline filled paranormal occurrences, this is a book any ghost fanatic should absolutely check out. The description of “Supernatural meets X-Files” says it all! 

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