The Haunted- Danielle Vega

I give this book 3 Black Cats and 2 Knives. A decent story with an unsatisfying, overly violent end that didn’t have to be.

🐈‍⬛🐈‍⬛🐈‍⬛🗡️🗡️

(How much I enjoyed the book 3/5) and 2 knives (knives are how badly the author butchered the ending 2/5)

It was almost… what it could have been.

***Warning- Spoilers and Lots of them. Hopefully you’ve read the book. If you haven’t GO READ THE BOOK and then come back and have a conversation with me 🐈‍⬛

The Haunted- Danielle Vega

I enjoyed the writing. I liked..ish… the story. I did not find it creepy enough to be true horror. Although the end was overly brutal breaking the tone that was set throughout the beginning and middle of the book. The author seemed to promise one thing and then deliver another making it feel a bit disjointed to me.

BUT THE TRUE TRADGEDY, is that this book was set up perfectly for a 5 Black Cat Review! It was all primed and ready for what could have and should have been a killer ending! (Get it! See what I did there.) And therefore I gave it two knives. It killed two of it’s perfectly good cats.

Okay, so I’m going to break down the plot of this book incase you haven’t read it yet or if you read it a while ago and need a refresher about what it’s about.  And then, I’ll tell you how Book Witch would have ended this book. 

Hendricks moves into a haunted house. She quickly discovers that a young girl named Mary Beth was murdered in the basement. The girl’s brother was convicted of the crime and he hung himself in the living room. While Hendrix is spooked by these ghosts she isn’t quite sure if it’s just left over PTSD from her abusive boyfriend as no one but her seems to encounter the ghosts. We, as readers, completely believed there were ghosts in her house. 

Hendricks gets to know her neighbor Eddie. He’s an outsider who doesn’t have as much money as the popular kids and no one really likes. It was his sister, Mary Beth who was murdered in the basement as well as his brother, Kyle, who hung himself in the living room. Eddie tells a touching tale of how life used to be when Mary Beth was alive. He says his parents had even thought of having another baby, Valentina. They would talk about her all the time. His mother kept Mary Beth’s baby clothes for Valentina and joked with the brothers that, “when Valentina gets here you’ll have to share a room.” Eddie talks about how weird it is that he misses BOTH of his sisters. After Mary Beth died and Kyle committed suicide everyone stopped talking about Valentina. He felt like he used to have this big family and now it was just him and his parents.  

There are several ghost attacks that only Hendricks can see and hear but we find that Mary Beth and Kyle were just casualties of the actual ghosts; three boys as well as a ghost cat that’s shockingly good at luring people into the cellar. We learn that a girl named Maggie was bullied by the three popular kids and eventually they even killed her cat (voila ghost kitty) Maggie finally has enough of the bullies and murders the boys in horrific ways including stapling one’s mouth shut and carving loser into another boys chest.

The ghosts attack Hendricks’ 18 month old brother and throw him into the wall breaking his leg. After this attack she discovers “One more” written in blood on his wall. Hendericks and Eddie decide they need help and find a medium that they bring to the house. The medium explains that the writing on the wall means there must be three sacrifices for the three boys. Mary Beth and Kyle were one and two and now the house has chosen Hendricks for the third sacrifice. 

Hendricks has no desire to die but fortunately the medium explains it doesn’t have to be a life for a life. Mary Beth sacrificed her future. Kyle, sacrificed his innocence and no one will ever know that he didn’t murder Mary Beth. And now a third sacrifice is required. 

There was a small red herring here where Hendricks believes that she could let go, or sacrifice the love that she shared with her abusive ex boyfriend by burning his old soccer jersey and whispering very sincerely that she is sacrificing love.  

This seems to stave the ghosts off for the next few weeks and everything returns to normal. Hendricks returns to hanging with the popular kids and ignoring the outcast, black T-shirt wearing Eddie which I found a bit disappointing, but whatever. 

Then it’s the night of the party. Hendrick’s entire school comes over to her house. Eddie does too but just to retrieve his lighter from a bedroom upstairs. One of the popular kids mentioned early in the book that three boys had disappeared from her mothers high school and never been found. The girl wants to prove her story is real by showing the yearbook around. Hendricks sees it and recognizes that the missing boys are the ghosts in her house. She quickly scrolls through the yearbook and figures out who Saggie Maggie is, the girl who could no longer endure the bullying and murdered the boys. Eddie’s mother!

Okay, now you have the chance to bring this book to an exciting conclusion. And this is precisely where I feel like Ms. Vega let it all fall apart. She had set up everything perfectly for a great end. The plot was going well. I liked the characters. I could even think of several ways for this to come to a satisfying end. But no. She dropped the ball. Missed the three point shot. Tripped at the finish line. And I finished the book with a disappointed sigh instead of a cheer. 

There are two endings that I think would have been excellent. Eddie’s mother was never fleshed out in the book. Hendricks runs into her very briefly one time at Eddie’s house and the woman seems nice enough as she scuttles around bleaching everything in her very simple, very run down house. 

This, in my opinion, is a big mistake. Maggie is key in this story. She was bullied. She snapped. She MURDERED three boys in horrific ways. She buried them in the yard of an abandoned house and to this day lives next door to that house. Two of her children died in the very same house as the murders and you are telling me that Maggie has never said anything or done anything to keep Eddie from going over there? You really expect me to believe that a MOTHER isn’t putting the pieces together that SHE may be the reason that house is haunted? You also expect me to believe that that house and those spirits haven’t called her to the house when she lives next door? She sees those boys’ graves every day. She also sees where both of her children died and she doesn’t crack? Or at least move away? Really? 

ANYWAYS…. I think that mama could have figured out what was going on and could have rushed over to sacrifice herself in place of her last living child, Eddie, for the crimes she had committed. 

If you want an even more satisfying ending and something that was already set up by Danielle, then I would have loved for Maggie to have marched over to face the ghosts and let them know that it had already taken three sacrifices from her. Mary Beth, Kyle and….. Valentina. 

The way they all believed they would one day have another child and even set aside clothes for her and talked about her and hoped for her is definitely enough of a sacrifice. Valentina will never exist and anyone who has ever lost the hope of a baby, it absolutely feels like a death. It is definitely a much bigger sacrifice than Hendricks sacrificing what she believed was love. Valentina was a symbol of the family’s hope and their expectations of a future. If Maggie admitted to what she had done in front of the town (Who were all conveniently at Hendricks house for a huge party that night) and had burned one of Valentina’s dresses, I believe that the ghosts should have been appeased and the haunting should have ended. 

Well, for those of you who do not remember how the book ended… here ya go. Hendricks is captured by the ghosts. Her hands and feet are tied and her mouth is duct taped. She is then forced to watch the ghosts carve looser into Eddie’s chest before they graphically staple his mouth shut with a stapler. This part of the book is much darker than the rest of the book and I feel like it really doesn’t deliver on the tone that was originally promised the reader at the beginning. Anyway, Eddie does pull the staples out and he professes his love for Hendricks and tells her that she couldn’t sacrifice love to rid the house of ghosts because he was already in love with her. None of this rings very authentic to me as I think the house shouldn’t have ever cared about any kind of sacrifice from Hendricks as it’s true desire would be to kill Maggie’s children or more likely Maggie herself.

Anyway, Eddie wants to save all of the high school students being attacked by skeletons in the front yard so he takes a giant pair of scissors and plunges it into his chest. And dies. Yup. He dies. And all of Hendricks’ friends from the book have awful repercussions from the night such as dislocated shoulders that will never be the same, madness from what they’ve seen and one is still in a coma. So that all got very dark very fast and once again I feel like the tone is very different from the beginning ⅘ of the book where it was more of a light hearted jump scare kind of book where you expect everyone to make it out alive and happy.

So tell me what you think. Do you like the ending? Do you think mine is any better? Would you have Eddie or his mother Maggie burn Valentina’s dress? Or do you think you have an even better twist that I missed? 

Final Thoughts: Another thing that bothers me is that if Valentina isn’t the answer, why even tell us about her? Just to try and make Eddie likable? And why did we meet Maggie? Just so Hendricks could identify her in the yearbook? Because that is pretty weak to me. If Maggie is alive she needs to pay for her crimes. And following along that line, I’m not sure how to feel about Maggie. She was bullied but murdering three boys especially in such sadistic ways isn’t justified and leads me to believe she’s a sociopath which still doesn’t give me much sympathy for her. But then having her own children murdered in retribution isn’t justified either. It leaves me feeling very unsatisfied with Maggie’s story. 

Therefore, 3 cats and 2 knives. A decent story with an unsatisfying, overly violent end that didn’t have to be.

(How much I enjoyed the book 3/5) and 2 knives (knives are how badly the author butchered the ending 2/5)