There's Someone in your House

Photo credit Penguin Random House

With Halloween fast approaching, if you're in need of a gory, frightful, ever changing story that will keep you in suspense, with an added lightness in the middle, then Stephanie Perkins’ There’s Someone in Your House is the right book for you! A fast paced mystery that will change just when you think you’re on the right track and with an added creepiness factor you’ll start thinking any noise or change in your house is a sign that a killer might be near.

Perkins puts a lot of thought and development into her characters as we learn more and more about them throughout the story, like pulling back the layers of an onion. For example, when we first learn about Ollie and his newly pinkened hair, he is described as having “a skinny frame”, and “cheekbones that so prominent they reminded her of a skull” He kind of looked like a skeleton. From this the reader can make the assumption that he is a pretty dead character that doesn't really have a heart or emotions, which he is later described as being a bit of a loner and shy. Throughout the story though he starts to become a character who is dynamic and who has depth. As we get to know him however we get a little more understanding of why he seems this way on the outside and how even though Ollie hadn’t done anything that bad, “most of the disappointment was in his own head. “causing his brother worry, he felt was the worst thing he could have done. This showed a new side of Ollie that we had to unveil slowly, and that’s just one character in the story. The rest are just as complex.

Visually, Perkins created such grotesque and detailed pictures within the reader’s mind by utilizing a lot of figurative language. To give the reader a visual of the reporters outside the school, Perkins says, “They hovered like vultures between the campus and parking lot waiting for the students to be let out for the weekend. Waiting for carrion.” This gives a clear picture of the reporters as vultures, and connects to how the students feel about being scavenged upon after losing a classmate. Even normal objects that were supposed to be cheerful, like sunflowers, chrysanthemums, gerbera daisies were “cheerfully autumnal, but the shadows they cast were inky and menacing.” This gives them a real killer like vibe. The weather after the attacks is also described as, “the midnight sky wept in an unexpected drizzle.” In personifying the rain, we can also tell the mood of the characters and town within the story. These few examples of figurative language add an ominous effect to the mood of the novel, which really enhances the mystery.

While this is a spooky, scary, mystery, there were some unexpected insights sprinkled in that added to the level of realism and connection to the novel. Makani deals with some doubts about herself, which most teens do and Ollie has a great insight when he says, “Everybody has at least one moment they deeply regret, but that one moment… it doesn’t define all of you.” This is a deep insight can impact a lot of us who are struggling with regrets. “I know that our regrets change us, and that’s how we grow - for better or for worse. And it seems to me you’re growing better.” We all want to grow and learn from our mistakes. Our dreams and our ambitions also play a big role in our future. “It took a person with extraordinary drive and ambition to break from the pattern. They dreamed of other places, but to someone who didn’t know them well, perhaps they seemed destined to be stuck too. But it was impossible to know what was inside a person, or how they might change over time.” We may know other’s dreams and ambitions, but sometimes what’s inside of them is bigger than what they share. We all have something special inside of us and we need to follow that, and change if and when we need to. Not settling, especially in High school, is an insight that many if not all of us can learn from.

While this is not normally the type of text I tend to gravitate towards, it was a pleasant surprise. While I had read other books by stephanie perkins a book that was scary, yet realistic and twisty when it came to figuring out why the killer was making the choices of who to kill and why to kill was thoroughly intriguing and highly entertaining. I think one of the things that I really disagreed with, but I know is realistic is the hate and threats of rape, murder, and scalping that Makani received after her mistake along with the internet hashtags of #swimsluts, #konagate, and #CommitSuicideSquad. Threats this severe should not be made over the internet or anywhere for that matter, and this really struck a chord with me and shows how important digital citizenship is. Overall I really enjoyed this book and thought it was the perfect scary story to start the fall season! I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a lighter suspense mystery with a bit of gore.

Overall, this book is a wonderful addition to any young adult collection. It’s engaging, suspenseful, yet has a realistic fiction undertone that still incorporates important issues in the lives of young adults. With its figurative language adding the different moods throughout the story, the complex characters that you have to really get to know, and the unexpected insights that young adults can really learn from, makes it a great book that I think most young adults will really get into!

Perkins, S. (2017). There’s Someone Inside Your House. New York, NY: Dutton Books.