The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

 

                                                                look at this creepy ass cover!

The Blurb: (From Goodreads)

It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, the lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

I've wanted to read this for forever, but always jumped to something else. I started this book in October for Spooky Month, but I finished it up a few days ago. 

My first impression was that I loved how Jackson writes characters. Each one of them felt like real people with real personalities and real quirks. Eleanor is as meek as a mouse and starts off really folded into herself. She feels the call to the house and her great "adventure" and that is what made me love her so so much. 

Luke is just kind of there living his life and experiencing this with a "okay whatever happens happens" kind of mindset. A chill dude. He's funny and seems to be open minded to pretty much whatever the house and the other characters throw at him. 

Theodora is a drama queen, but a seemingly kind-hearted and caring (in her own way) person. She's more about the experience than anything. She seems very interested in understanding how Eleanor works and prodding her a bit to come out of her shell and live life. 

These three work together as a character group to make this story feel like it's unfolding in a way that makes sense. This is obviously a creepy "haunted house" book, but the story is very character driven, especially from Eleanor's perspective. The house itself takes a back seat and there's not that much actual haunting rather than a nice creep factor. 

The book is a quick read (I'm just a slow reader sometimes) and it's gonna drag you in. It doesn't seem like much is happening but if you pay attention to tonal shifts in how character's interact you will enjoy the building up of tension straight to the finale, which is bleak and sad but seemingly inevitable. 

I really enjoyed it and do recommend it for a quick and creepy read. 

Sidebar: 

This book has been made into several movies, bot direct interpretations and indirect. I've watched and enjoyed most of them barring the very old movies. I would suggest reading the book before you delve into the movies/mini series first though.