Meh. Gimmicky. ( )

Twelve Nights at Rotter House by J.W. Ocker is an excellent haunted house story! Absolutely perfect for the Halloween season of reading spooky books. Travel writer, Felix Allsey, is not your typical travel writer; he writes travelogues about haunted places. He seeks out the most haunted locations, inhabits the place, and writes books about his experiences. Felix thinks he has found the golden egg with Rotterdam Mansion, and that his writing career will skyrocket with success.

Felix gathers the essentials he will need for an extended stay at Rotter House. He establishes his usual rules of not leaving the house, avoiding outside contact, and sleeping during the day, so he can explore the residence at night when the ghosts are most active. For this project, Felix asks his best friend, Thomas, to stay with him. There is an unspoken tension between the two friends. You’ll have to read the book to learn about their sordid past.

Ocker is an outstanding writer. This book is extremely well written, especially regarding descriptive context of the house. I was able to conjure the most lucrative, abandoned mansion in my mind. I appreciated a twist to the story early on. It was nothing ultra shocking; I just thought it was a clever twist to the story and I like how Ocker held the detail back until it was necessary. The progression of the story kept me on the edge of my seat wondering about the history between Felix and Thomas.

Unquestionably, the story spiraled in ways I didn’t expect. As the ghostly encounters increased in intensity, I was curious how this book was going to end. It was...

I have photos and additional information that I'm unable to include here. It can all be found on my blog, in the link below.
A Book And A Dog ( )

I was completely unprepared for the ending. ( )

Wherein an annoying narrator, Felix, begs his way into a "haunted house" alone for 13 nights. Felix is a travel writer of the spooky variety. This book idea is his last chance for a hit before he has to give up his writing career and find a more stable profession to pay the bills. His idea is to live at a haunted house without high-tech equipment (like ghost hunters) and see if the experience will turn him from skeptic to believer.

Rotterdam House is a more locally known haunted house, so the hope is that his experiment and resulting book will make it a famous attraction, or at least that was how he sold it to the owner to convice her to allow him to stay at the house.

After night two, his best friend, whom he had begged to join him, finally does. Thomas is a believer, and Felix has the idea that their conflicting beliefs will make the narrative more interesting. And it does because they experience things that Felix just doesn't want to believe, even with his own eyes, while Thomas is trying to talk sense into him. The happenings are creepy as hell, and Felix remains skeptical.

There are things in this book that don't make sense and are unbelievable. Like Felix not believed his own eyes and insisting that they stick it out. Or Thimas being a black man that willing stayed the night at a haunted house-- Not even for my BFF!! But the twist at the end... Wowzers I never saw it coming. In the end, it all made sense. ( )

"The first floor had plenty of furniture, surely bought and left by countless past residents who dared call this behemoth home. When you flee in terror, you rarely stop for the ottomans."

This was not at all what I was expecting from what sounded like a "typical haunted house" novel.
Yes Felix moves into an abandoned house in order to write a book about his experiences, but from the start the alleged haunted history of this home is a bit vague which only serves to emphasize that it may not be the main theme in this story. Enter Thomas, the estranged best friend. We don't really know why these former best buds have stopped speaking to each other, only that Felix has reached out to him for help with his book and although it is the first time they've bothered with each other in a year, Thomas has agreed. The pace is a bit slow here and we are given only the briefest of hints as to what could have caused their falling out. At this point I thought I had it all figured out and that the ghosts were not meant to be literal but whether or not this ghost of a friendship could be resurrected from it's death. I can't share much more of my thought process or tell you if I was right or wrong in my assumptions without ruining the reveal at the end but I will say that although it was a leisurely arrival the pay off was with the wait.

I received an advance copy to review.
All of my reviews are posted at https://wellwortharead.blogspot.com/ ( )