Sick House

Sick House by Jeff Strand
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Boyd Gardener gets a job in another town, he moves into a rental property with his wife and their two daughters. Odd things start happening, like food spoiling, and people getting ill. But there are far worse things in store for the Gardener family inside... THE SICK HOUSE!

I'm a big Jeff Strand fan and I finally pulled the trigger on buying this a couple weeks ago. I'm glad I did.

Sick House is told in two threads, that of three men hired to kill an old woman and Boyd Gardener and his family. It wasn't all that apparent just how the threads would intersect at first.

After Cyclops Road and Blister, I think I let my guard down a little. I won't make that mistake again. Jeff Strand spends the early portion of the book introducing Boyd and his family. Once you get to know them and like them, he unleashes the bad shit upon them. There's a lot more blood and gore in this than from a lot of Jeff Strand's recent books. There were times I didn't think any of the Gardeners would survive.

That's about all I want to reveal. It was an exciting haunted house tale, a type of horror that typically goes for the slow burn. Sick House was like having someone hold your hand to the burner of a stove. Once they turn the burner on, it's only a matter of seconds before you're smelling roasted skin. While I don't put this on the level of Kumquat, my favorite Strand book, it's definitely up there. 4 out of 5 stars.

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