Book Review: THE SUICIDE HOUSE by Charlie Donlea

Title: THESUICIDE HOUSE

Author: CharlieDonlea
Publisher: Kensington Books
Read: June 2020

Expected publication: 28 July 2020

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

Inside the walls of Indiana's elite Westmont Preparatory High School, expectations run high and rules are strictly enforced. But in the woods beyond the manicured campus and playing fields sits an abandoned boarding house that is infamous among Westmont's students as a late-night hangout. Here, only one rule applies: don't let your candle go out--unless you want the Man in the Mirror to find you. . . .

One year ago, two students were killed there in a grisly slaughter. The case has since become the focus of a hit podcast, The Suicide House. Though a teacher was convicted of the murders, mysteries and questions remain. The most urgent among them is why so many students who survived that horrific night have returned to the boarding house--to kill themselves.

Rory, an expert in reconstructing cold cases, is working on The Suicide House podcast with Lane, recreating the night of the killings in order to find answers that have eluded the school, the town, and the police. But the more they learn about the troubled students, the chillingly stoic culprit, and a dangerous game gone tragically wrong, the more convinced they become that something sinister is still happening. Inside Westmont Prep, the game hasn't ended. It thrives on secrecy and silence. And for its players, there may be no way to win--or to survive. . . . 

What attracted me to this book:

THE SUICIDE HOUSE is my first book by Charlie Donlea and I wonder what took me so long! I had heard such amazing things about this author and I think it was the promise of a spooky abandoned house setting that finally made me take the plunge.

My musings:

If you are as fond of spooky house settings as I am, the promise on the blurb of “an abandoned boarding house” and students going there at night to play a game called “man in the mirror” (creepy!) will probably act as much as a red flag for you as it did for me. I simply HAD TO read it! Rest assured that the setting is just as creepy as promised, and it comes with a high body count, because several students have met their maker there, some at the hands of a brutal killer and some to apparent suicides on the nearby railway tracks. The happenings at night, both in the house and in the dark woods surrounding it, have exactly the sort of spook factor I was after, and I gratefully snuggled deep into the safety of my doona whilst reading it.

There is a lot going on in this book, and a lot of characters to keep track of, so it took me a little while to get into the full flow of the story. Basically, two students have been murdered in the most horrific fashion during the “man in the mirror” initiation night at the abandoned boarding house, a college tradition of the school’s secret society (which in itself was very intriguing). A teacher has been convicted of the murders, his subsequent suicide attempt seen as an admission of guilt. So why do other students involved in the secret society continue to throw themselves in front of trains? Has the wrong man stood trial for the murders? Enter brilliant investigators Rory Moore and Lane Phillips and you might get the answer to these questions ....

The story never quite slows down its frantic pace like the trains that rumble past the old boarding house at night, as the author uses various formats to tell his tale, from podcasts to journal entries to different POVs. At times, I thought there was almost too many characters, because I kept mixing them all up, but it still worked out perfectly for me in the end and made for a real roller coaster of a read. I wish I had read SOME CHOOSE DARKNESS first, which introduced the two main investigators, but I will definitely make up for lost time now. Also, not having Rory’s brilliant mind, I constantly mixed up the timelines, probably because they are only one year apart and not that easily distinguishable from one another.

Summary:

All in all, THE SUICIDE HOUSE made for a breakneck read I was loathe to put down, combining a multi-layered mystery with a deliciously spooky setting and two fascinating main investigators I definitely want to read more of. Sinister and gruesome in places and staged in a great atmospheric setting, it made for perfect night time reading. I really enjoyed it and will now catch up on the author’s earlier work.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Kensington Books for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.