Item - Horror House

I bought this book when it first came out, and re-read it recently. Overall, not a bad read, as with many other books later in the series there were fewer endings so as to manage to get more storyline in. Although you never reach what I felt would be a satisfying conclusion (the mystery man who is causing all the mayhem never actually trusts you enough to stay willingly), one ending does allow you to see into his past and how he came to be the reason the house seems to be called Horror House. I did enjoy the reason for the hidden rooms underneath the house, and would say this is one of Edward Packard's better works.

More reviews by Countersound

Reputedly haunted houses seem to go with Edward Packard like tortilla chips with salsa, but Horror House came along much closer to the end than the beginning of the original Choose Your Own Adventure project. Could Packard conjure a story as evocative as The Mystery of Chimney Rock? Normally you'd be happy after your aunt Lily moves to town with her kids, Martin and Melissa. Yet you're nervous; they are living in the old Peckham house, a Victorian mansion with a dark past. More than one tenant has violently died over the decades, and your cousins are already hearing and seeing things that indicate the place is haunted. Is a phantom stalking the house, or is a hoax at play?

You could talk with the neighbors for more information. Mrs. Dixon is adamant the place is cursed and your aunt should leave at once, but Mr. Prial thinks it likely that real estate developer Roger Algren wants to scare your aunt into selling so he can purchase the property. Neither neighbor has proof to back their suppositions. If you stay overnight at the house, you'll have opportunity to see any supernatural occurrence firsthand, but are you brave enough to sleep in the living room, where strange sights have been reported? Further spooky incidents will bring either a psychic medium or private investigator to examine the house, but are there answers to be found in either the strictly rationalist or spiritualist worldview?

The situation worsens when Gigi, yours cousins' dog, is clawed nearly to death by a mysterious entity in the night. Nerves badly strained, Aunt Lily declares the only option is to move out...but you have one last night to prove there's no ghost. The dark, eerie cellar seems a focal point of all the paranormal activity, but do you have the guts to spend the night there? You might spot a figure in the shadows, but catching the person won't be easy. The villain of Peckham house knows the cellar in and out, and you can easily lose track of the figure, and with it your shot at solving the mystery. Strike the right balance between courage and caution, and you'll reveal the truth behind the curse...and perhaps make it possible for Aunt Lily, Martin, and Melissa to stay here after all. You could transform the entire town's outlook by exorcising the ghost.

Horror House has a much more structured story than your typical Choose Your Own Adventure. Your choices influence the narrative, but it goes through clearly defined "acts" during its full arc. There's a certain degree of atmosphere in the telling, but this book suffers from lack of attention to detail in the core narrative. Internal consistency stays fairly strong, but implausibilities in the final explanation leave the story well short of what it could have accomplished. I don't want to sound too negative, though; Horror House isn't unenjoyable. Ron Wing contributes excellent illustration work, in particular what he does with the numerous suspense scenes in the dark. This is no The Mystery of Chimney Rock, but there's fun to be had.

More reviews by KenJenningsJeopardy74

I liked this book -- it's entertaining and suspenseful. It has good plot consistency too -- however, only one of the endings really reveals the whole story. All of the other endings hint at a solution, but aren't nearly as satisfying. I also didn't like the fact that there aren't enough endings (only 8). But there are interesting characters in here, including one (Aunt Lily) who later appears in War with the Mutant Spider Ants.

More reviews by stonemason

Ironically, for a title like Horror House, your character never dies in this book (as an aside, that's not a complaint). This is one of the few Choose Your Own Adventure books in which there are no truly happy endings; the best the reader can hope for is to end up a little wiser and with the least compromising set of circumstances. It serves as a good introduction to the idea that in life one is bound to come across desperate people that one, despite the best of intentions, can never adequately help. Helping such persons may be either wholly outside of one's ability and control and, alternatively, to the extent that it is in one's ability and control, it may come at a very high personal cost. Decisions along these lines are no trivial matter.

Moreover, the book touches on the idea that such persons’ desperation may not necessarily be caused due to any fault of their own. If Edward Packard's goal was to enable younger readers to see the unfortunate through sympathetic eyes, I think he would have succeeded.

This book reminded me of the 2019 Academy Award-winning Korean film, Parasite, in which someone had been secretly living in the basement of a family’s home for years. This book has the same basic premise and each branching narrative is consistently along this plot. I found some of the endings deeply saddening. I particularly found the ending in which Rudy explains he got in this situation because “[he] couldn't get a job. Everyone spat on [him]. [And he] wanted to crawl into a hole in the ground, and [he] found one.” Your character tries helping him, inviting him upstairs for food, but when you turn away to get your aunt, he clears out leaving you a farewell note that you won't have to see him again (i.e., that he won't bother you again). This is emotionally heavy stuff.

Though some reviewers will complain about this, I love the fact that it had just eight endings. At 115 pages, that is slightly over 14 pages per story so the stories’ pacing and development was excellent. I do wish, however, that Edward Packard had introduced a couple of branching arcs that were outside of the main premise, perhaps something supernatural. I, for one, would have enjoyed that varied storytelling because the singular theme did get a bit monotonous. The book does take a slight detour in introducing a medium who, as could be expected, turned out to be nothing more than a charlatan. His bombastic claims reminded me of the Stupendous Yappi, another charlatan from one of the X-Files' best episodes, Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose (by the way, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you make an effort to do so). The medium’s run was very short-lived and I feel that a very engaging story could have been crafted with his involvement.

I also want to very briefly mention that I quite enjoyed the epistemological discussion with Mrs. Dixon. She had a small appearance in the book but she was a realistic character and made her mark well. Lastly, Ron Wing’s artwork is also splendid. His drawing style is more graphic instead of cartoon and I'd say he's about 80% Ralph Reese and 20% Frank Bolle.

Rating: 7.0/10.0

More reviews by tonylachief

Some parts of this book are surprisingly dark. (possible spoiler) When being held captive by a man who is most likely mentally ill, and is currently pondering killing you for his own safety, you try to reason with him. You ask "What would you like more than anything in the world?" "For you not to exist!" he roars.

That is DARK.

Still, this is a very good book. I agree that there are very few endings; however, less endings means more story. Packard manages to weave the story into itself so that less endings are necessary. The downside of this is that it often doesn't matter what choice you made; you're still headed for the same ending, but you get a few extra pages of dialogue in one choice. But, I didn't like that he wasted two of the eight endings with extremely similar "Your aunt sells her house and you didn't figure out squat" finales. Really, only one of the choices should have led to that, but the other should have looped back into the story. One choice is to encourage her to stick it out, and the other is to say she should sell. But she sells in both! Oh well.

Very interesting, fleshed out characters make this an engaging read. The cover is a little puzzling, however. Yes, that does sort of happen in the book, but it's a very minor thing and not that big of a fire. I guess a lot of the other supernatural occurrences in the story are intangible (hearing noises and feeling vibrations), so they had to go with the fireball incident.

More reviews by yunakitty