Good Morning!

How’s your weekend going so far? Well I hope!

Before I started my next big read in the Scythe series, I wanted to take a quick little detour and try something unfamiliar.

I dug deep and found The Basement by Chad P. Brown.

This is a freebie I found on Amazon (you can check it out here), and I don’t really know the author, so I just gave this one a go.

So how did I like it? Scroll onwards, my friends!

Blurb:

On a dare from her best friends, Heather goes inside the town’s haunted house, where Frank Blackwell killed his wife and then hung himself in the basement. But while in the house, Heather is confronted by a ghost from her past, her mother who died accidentally one year ago. Now, Heather must not only escape from the evil lurking inside the house, but from the demons of her own past.

GoodReads

The Review:

Unfortunately I only gave this short story two stars.

Just for clarification, I get no gratification out of giving low scores. Being an author myself, I know a lot of hard work goes into each work presented. However, there were a lot of things that didn’t work for me on this read.

Before I take a trip down constructive criticism road, what did work for me was the concept. Haunted houses are a frequently visited theme in the realm of horror, and for good reason. They’re super creepy and you never know what evil lurks in the darkness. Going in, I had high hopes but was quickly disappointed.

Overall I felt that the writing could be improved upon. The sentences don’t flow as well as they could, and the metaphors/similes used are a bit weak. Since haunted houses are now somewhat cliche, this work needed to set itself apart, and on this level it didn’t. It’s not terrible, but has a lot of room for improvement.

The main character Heather was alright, but I didn’t really develop any feeling for her. That’s often the case with short stories, so I’m not surprised.

The plot was super simple, which I typically like. Friend gets dared into going into a haunted house and chaos ensues. Unfortunately, what does end up happening in the house wasn’t really scary to me. I’ll admit it is hard to scare me, but it didn’t even come close. The ‘scary’ bits we do get are okay, but are just not executed as well as they could be on a writing level.

In the end, I just didn’t have much of a reaction to this story. If it was revised and the flow improved upon, it may become a three or even four star read, but until that day comes this story is forgettable in my opinion and I cannot recommend in its present form.

That’s a Wrap!

Thanks for stopping by, and happy reading!

Have you read this book before? What did you think? Do you have a book recommendation similar to this one? Feel free to share in the comments!

If you’d like to see other reviews of mine, feel free to check out the book review section of my blog or my GoodReads. You can also follow my GoodReads reviews here. There are some great binge-worthy books on there!

Have a great day!

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