The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich [book review]

The Dead House

Book: The Dead House

By: Dawn Kurtagich

Published: August 6, 2015

Publisher: Orion Children’s books

Setting: England

Genre: YA Horror

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About The Dead House

Twenty-five years ago, Elmoridge High burned down. Three people were killed, and Carly Johnson disappeared. But now, in the ruins of the school, a diary is found. The diary belongs to Kaitlynn Johnson, Carly’s identical twin sister. But the thing is that Carly doesn’t have a twin. Now that the case is open again, a lot of things have been uncovered. Who was Kaitlynn, and why did she only come out at night? Was she real, or was she Carly’s disturbed imagination?

What I thought

I have had this book on my shelf for a good long while. Lately, I have had a bad habit of buying books and then not getting to them. This is really something I need to get better at because I wish I had gotten to this book sooner.

The Dead House is a very quick read. I know that this book may not seem like a fast read because it’s a pretty big book. But trust me, I am a slow reader, and I managed to get through it pretty fast. A lot of the pages are actually really short, and the chapters are short too.

The story is fast-paced, though. There are some parts of the story that I do kind of wish we got a little more answers to the girls, but I do think that this is probably one of the few books that doesn’t bother me so much when not getting all of the answers.

This story really does a great job of making you question what’s real or not. Are there two people (souls) in one body, or is Carly having severe mental health issues? The book has a fine line on what’s real and what’s not, and it’s left up to the reader to decide what’s real and what’s not.

The ending is done well to and now I kind of want a second book to find out what happened and what has happened since. I would love to know more about Carly and what exactly happened. There are so many loose ends I would love to find out about and figure out what all happened. I do have to say that I loved the book and pretty much all of the characters.

If you like this review, then you might like my review of The October Boys.

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