"Devil House" refers to a building where unsolved murders occurred, where twisted pornography and satanic symbols were left behind. It sounds like we are in for a creepy, terrifying read. We are introduced to Gage Chandler, a true crime writer who is out to investigate what really happened. He is meticulous, trying to recreate every aspect at the scene of the crime. He notes that it matters whose air he is breathing.

Early on we get sidetracked by his previous book, "The White Witch of Morro Bay," an interesting story, maybe more interesting than the "Devil House" one. The narrative changes a number of times and the momentum suffers. Just when things slow, we are subjected to "Song of Gorbonian," a whole chapter about some ludicrous medieval knights. I can not say what it had to do with the rest of the book, I forced myself to skim over it just to see if there was anything that would pull me back into the orbit of the plot.

I did like the meat of the book, it was just like an album you enjoy except for the filler. I hate to give it just two stars--I just can not see recommending it to anyone who does not need to read it because of their love for the author. Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I'm going to be the odd one out who didn't love this. I respect it but I didn't like it. Danielle has written a novel about true crime that includes another novel within. It twists, it turns, it's a commentary on how we've gotten off course due to our fascination with crime. Gage, who moves into a house where several people were murdered in the 1980s starts out looking for the truth or truths of what happened but then all is upended. I don't know how to describe this because it's unique and a challenge to read. Thanks to Netgalley for the ArC.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Are you sure? Where will you be when you grow up?

Gage Chandler is a true crime writer whose claim to fame was writing a book about a couple of teens who were killed by a teacher, Diana Crane, also known as the White Witch. What he found out about the murders would profoundly navigate the rest of his career. A career which has basically stalled.

But he is now given the chance of a lifetime! When asked if he would like to do a story about a double killing in the 1980’s in a porn shop, which has since been converted into a house in which he can live in while doing his research he is not convinced at first, but finally agrees.

The house is known in the town of Milpitas, California as the Devil House because when they found the mutilated bodies of the realter and owner of the building, there were satanic writings and graffiti everywhere. This was a time when satanic rituals among teenagers was very prominent. No one was ever charged with the brutal crimes. And to make matters worse, this small town had a previous murder back in 1981. A woman was raped and murdered, and a movie called River’s Edge was made about the case.

Locals are not happy to see a writer not only living in the house but stirring up all the bad vibes from the past. So as Gage immerses himself in research about what the history is of the Devil House and finding out that at the time of the murders two teenage boys, Derek and Seth had basically taken over staying in the building when the manager of the store had taken off, his imagination takes off.

He sets about interviewing people and begins to get a sense of what was happening at the time of the murders, with the teenagers and life in general in the small town. The deeper he delves the more he returns to his first book and how sometimes things are not as they appear to be. Although the stories are completely different, the similarities are concerning to him.

In most tragic murder cases there is the truth and there is what people believe or want to believe is the truth. There are suspects and there are individuals some wish were suspects. There is folklore which some take as fact. Gage finds himself totally immersed in not only this aspect of his current research, but in his past work.

He also realizes at some point that he grew up with a friend who moved to this small town during the time frame of the murders. As he reaches out to his friend for assistance Gage is at a crossroads in his career as to how to go forward. Sometimes a murder is sadly, just that even though everyone wants to believe it was more. It is up to the writer to either tell the facts as they are or embellish the truth for more interesting content. That is his quandary.

The Devil House is an interesting look at what being a true crime writer must be like. Thank you #NetGalley #MCD #DevilHouse #JohnDarnielle for the advanced copy.

Having read Wolf in White Van and Universal Harvester, I knew this new book by John Darnielle was going to get weird. His style of writing and way of revealing his stories is really unique. In Devil House we follow a true crime writer whose style is to completely immerse himself in a crime scene in order to write about it, going so far as to buy the house where a double homicide occurred in order to write his book. I’m struggling to put into words what this was about as think I’ll be thinking about it for awhile, but I enjoyed the reading experience and felt immersed in the story and the characters. This book felt longer and a little slower in pace than the other two books I’ve read by this author, but it was worth the payoff.

More mystery and thriller than horror. Some of the dialogue seemed to go nowhere though at times, but mostly everything else was good..
This is my first from this writer. Besides the slow start, I enjoyed the style.

More mystery and thriller than horror. There were quite a few blood pressure raising parts, which I really appreciated. Started off slowly and took awhile to get to a good pace. Also seemed a few piece of dialogue were out of place. But interesting and gripping story overall..

Unfortunately I decided not to finish this book at the 60% mark. The style is experimental and for me, hard to follow. I liked the first section of the story quite a bit, where we meet the main character Gage who is a true crime writer. He decides to buy the Devil House, a building that used to be a diner and after that a news stand, then a porn video store. A gruesome crime took place in its last iteration, and this is to be the subject of Gage’s next book. The book meanders through various sections with changing styles, points of view and tenses. Clearly the author is very interested in the moral conundrum is that accompany writing about true crimes and in the first section, we get the most lurid details of some of the stories that Gage has covered in the past. This is followed by sections where we actually get to know the victims and perpetrators of those crimes in their multidimensional human selves, which is interesting but definitely lacked a strong narrative pace for me and I found my mind wandering. Since this is a work of fiction, I found it annoying that the crimes were kept shadowy and the narrator had to guess at detail. I’d rather read nonfiction for this level of uncertainty about what happened.

Fans of experimental prose and of Darnielle in general will likely enjoy this. It reminded me of REPRIEVE by James Hans Mattson at times; like that story, this one follows many characters and has a strong social justice theme running throughout. The cover arts suggests a haunted house story but that is not this book. My expectations were somewhat misaligned with the reality of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC I exchange for my honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and Farran, Straus, and Grioux for an ARC copy of Devil House by John Darnielle.

I do want to inform you that I DNF at 10% of the way through the book. So this review will be of what I read up to that point in time.

A true-crime writer, Gage Chandler in California, has been given his next book assignment, the Devil House. A house that he not only has to buy and refurbish as he goes but also writes about murder and 1980's occult actions that went on within the house. But, what he doesn't know is that the house has ties to his family history, after all, his mother is constantly reminding him that he is a descendant of kings.

I was rather excited by the premise and the very simple book cover. What is scarier than a house with secrets? Not to mention the main character who may or may not be a descendant of kings. However, when I started the book, I felt disappointed. The book is written in first person, which isn't a bad thing there are tons of books out there written well in first-person narrative. However, I felt that the writing was clunky, and the first person writing to be a bit impersonal?

Also, the way the book was divided into break chapter paragraphs, I was rather confused on whether or not I was missing something or when there was a transition.

But just because this wasn't my cup of tea, doesn't mean someone else won't enjoy it.

I wanted so badly to love this, considering I loved Darnielle's first novel Wolf in White Van. However, I couldn't get into this one and found it to be too meandering.

This book is a lot of things. It’s the story of a true crime writer working on his next book; it’s excerpts from his previous book. It’s real-time storytelling and fractured memories and it asks questions about telling a story from one side, or all sides, or whether to tell it at all.

There are times I put this book down — a book I giddily received an ARC to review — and didn’t want to pick it back up. There are stylistic shifts that grated on me; impromptu code-switches into Arthurian dialect, abrupt shifts in tone and writing style that can throw the reader off. At times Darnielle switches into second person, which works surprisingly well as the novel’s through-line builds and bubbles. It takes a while to boil over — at more than 400 pages, Devil House is roughly the length of Darnielle’s first two novels combined — but the water hits the fire eventually.

By the end, Devil House left me thinking. Like Darnielle’s best works both as a novelist and a lyricist, there is an incredible perspective here when it comes to storytelling. It’s layered, and meta, and often a commentary on itself. And even when that makes for a few choppy passages or lulls in momentum, the end result feels like you’ve gotten somewhere. It’s not about the journey and the destination; it’s about whether one can really live up to the other.

I struggled to finish this book, until I didn’t; I dragged through the first two-thirds before blitzing through the end. I devoured pages on the white witch and skimmed large chunks about swords and knights. I can still picture the inside of the Devil House.

This book is broken up and and at times jarring; often beautifully written if stylistically inconsistent. It's a frustrating book that’s actually multiple books. It is layered and complex. It took me months to power through, but I did, and I think it was worth it.

Devil House isn’t John Darnielle’s best work, but it features some of his best writing. And maybe that’s enough.

A circuitous and meandering nesting of narratives, that, while ambitious in scope and attentive to its subject, was emotionally and philosophically monotonous. The dense metafictional element was intriguing up to a point, then became repetitively dry and unengaging. Impressively layered but ultimately didn't connect with me.

I think that DEVIL HOUSE kind of fell into the same trap that UNIVERSAL HARVESTER did, in that it is marketed in a way that is different from the final product. I should have expected that, and that isn't to say that the story that Darnielle tells isn't well told. Darnielle has serious writing prowess, his style evocative and very emotional in a lot of ways. I think that for me, this was less an examination Satanic Panic hysteria and more of an examination (and sort of condemnation) of the entire True Crime genre. And hey, that's probably fair, as there are a lot of questions to be asked about the ethics of taking real life tragedy into entertainment for the masses. But it didn't connect as well for me as I would have liked, for a couple of reasons. For one, I think that Darnielle never quite got the right questions out about the genre. His biggest focus, to me, was on the victimization of the mother of one of the perpetrators of one of the crimes, making her pain feel more elevated than that of the woman that her son attacked (and was killed by, in frantic overkilly self defense). I also thought that this book did get a little self indulgent at times. I like that Darnielle likes to experiment with language and voice, but some of his choices felt very out of left field and like they didn't really fit outside of being unique for the sake of uniqueness.

I'm still super intrigued by Darnielle's writing. This one just didn't hit the way I thought it would.

Devil House by John Darnielle is a meta-narrative on the role an artist plays in the lives of his or her subjects. I found many of the themes resonant, particularly in an era of incredibly popular true crime TV, books, and podcasts, but ultimately the novel he’s written feels kind of hollow.

Devil House primarily follows true-crime writer, Gage Chandler, in pursuit of his next writing project in suburban northern California. Gage buys “the Devil House,” a former comics/pornography shop near an overpass that will serve as the subject of his next book. Now a renovated turn of the century modern home, the Devil House was also the scene of a grisly double homicide 15 years earlier that remains unsolved. The novel follows Gage as he explores how the murder happened and engages with the community, which has already suffered the Hollywood glorification of another brutal murder.

For a book with the title “Devil House,” there really isn’t anything particularly horrifying about this book. This is clearly the author’s intent, so don’t pick up this up thinking you’re going to get the second-coming of The Shining. Darnielle is much more interested in the responsibility of a nonfiction writer in accurately depicting his subjects, and how that depiction may ultimately affect community’s affected by great tragedy. I appreciated Darnielle’s mission here, and think that he points at something that seems pretty insidious about true-crime culture today. Still, I struggled to latch onto the book’s content. Darnielle has to write his character’s at arm’s length in order to accurately depict the process of writing a true-crime book, and in doing so replicates some of the genre’s most banal qualities.

Readers who enjoy true-crime may enjoy this book, but they also may feel they’re getting a lecture in some parts (without the benefit of this being based on a true event!). I would suggest readers come to this one with an open mind. They’ll undoubtedly appreciate the message, even if the story lacks in focus.

Meta-true crime-horror fiction-memoir. The storyteller becoming the story. The story within the story. Flipped narratives. I enjoy this kind of non-linear novel so much so that Richard Chizmar's Chasing the Boogeyman made my overall 'best of 2021' list after having been featured among my Halloween reads. Darnielle mashes up all of the above in Devil House, doing something similar but to a different end and effect here - with less of Chizmar's fear-building suspense and more gore. Dropping narrative breadcrumbs early on like, "...they settle on whichever version of the story eases the burden a little. The burden? The burden of the story they don't want to tell." Darnielle begins to let readers glimpse the hidden thread underlying this story, weaving it all the way through to the big reveal. His effective use of differing voice like Old English and Arthurian Legend skillfully shows a character's inner world and furthers the twisty narrative. Good writers show vs. tell, and Darnielle's style of showing has unique flair. I also appreciated Devil House for its study on writers and consumers of true crime and the powerful, often devastating, impact point of view can have on those who live "on the other side of the flames." Like Boogeyman, Devil House has shades of Stephen King's nostalgia for boy life, while weaving in real-world true crime, like the River's Edge story, for maximum effect. Compelling, unsettling, and thoughtfully layered, this title has already claimed a spot on my 2022 Halloween reads list.

Devil House is an interesting take on true crime phenomenon. It's known to be Americans favorite pastime, but for some cases we are not even sure that story reflects the reality. How much do we know about victims? How much do we know about the guilty party? Obviously, I'm not talking about horrible monsters that we shouldn't think twice about where crime and brutality of it as clear as a day. I'm talking about not so clear yet glamourized cases. Law enforcement might have the bigger picture, but how do true crime novels, shows, podcasts shape our perception of it?

Gage was a true crime author. He wrote a very successful book about a local case, which later turned into a film. His next challenge was another somewhat local case that involved a adult store and high schools students. He appeared to be very hardcore about his research. He bought the adult store that turned into a house to start his adventure. Then what came after was for us detangle.

I imagined this story almost as a pyramid: you start with the author, then dive into his previous successful story, then Devil house, after peaking at Gage's royal roots, it continues in reverse order coming back to Gage. You should be a true crime researcher yourself to pick up certain cues. At the end it leaves you with more questions than answers, but I still liked the style and story!

I’ve been sitting on my thoughts for this book for a bit because I am feeling very conflicted about this one. I’m living for this retro horror cover and I bit into the hype of seeing this in so many anticipated horror releases of 2022. I was absolutely stoked when I got an eARC from NetGalley. But this is not a horror book and even though I’m left bitter and a little salty about the misleading marketing of this, I do want to be fair in this review.

There’s no doubt John Darnielle can write. This book is full of ambition you will soon see the grand scope of as you start peeling back this book’s layers. Essentially Darnielle dives into the ethics and craft of True Crime media particularly True Crime books. We follow a True Crime writer and watch him reminisce and ponder over some of the cases he has written about. It’s a very layered story and it’s easy to get confused with the narrative structure. There are two sections titled Devil House where I found some really interesting and off putting writing choices (Old English being used in a short section as well as the switch to an Arthurian Legend style of writing where every character has Sir or Lady as part of their name) I didn’t understand the function of these choices and they really took me out. There’s an entire section in this book that’s about 20 minutes worth of reading that I entirely skimmed.

Who would I recommend this to?
I actually don’t know 😅 you would think I’d recommend this to my friends who love True Crime but I don’t know if I would. The more I sit on this book the more I think Darnielle actually hates the entire genre. It feels like Darnielle was trying to argue that’s there’s this inherent badness to True Crime existing as a genre of media and writers and readers of it should feel shame.

Parts of this book I really enjoyed as a literary drama, literary critique, and experiment in narrative structure. The section “White Witch” was my favorite and it was a 5 star section to me. Great points about centering victims in True Crime media that I wholeheartedly agree with.

I'm a massive fan of John Darnielle. Less him as a musician and more him as a writer. His books are works of art, strange strange art and his twitter feed is a gift. His recent thread on potatoes was...*chef's kiss*.

Devil House is magic. It straddles the line of mystery and fiction. It's odd. It's a story, within a story, within a story, within a story. There's no real narrator - I guess Gage Chandler is our main character - however he goes from our narrator to a character. He's a true crime writer, who has found success writing about a murder in his hometown and has now been tasked to write about a murder during the 1980's at the "Devil House" outside of San Francisco.

But, then - turning the page, we - the reader - are thrust into a different book - a different voice - a different narrative. We are now in Gage's research into his first book about The White Witch, in fact, we are The White Witch.

And then we - the reader - are teenagers - living in the "Devil House"...

And then we are Gage again...

This book is different than anything I've ever read and probably that I will ever read. I can't wait to read it again.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publishers and the fantastic John Darnielle for the opportunity to read and review this book in advance of its release.

I really disliked this book. It was overly descriptive and disjointed. The author's writing style reads like a factual newspaper article. There were useless statements that provided NOTHING to the plot. "There are plenty of towns everywhere, I guess, whose reputations beyond their borders, if they have any at all, reside in single instances of popular misrepresentation or outright caricature. I try to be sensitive to this dynamic--The Music Man is all that millions of people will ever know about Iowa. Each instance of this effect further distorts our overall field of view, our sense of who we really are." What does this add to the plot? What is this supposed to convey? My hope was that this book would be similar to Scott Thomas' "Kill Creek". I was very disappointed. It needed much stronger editing.

3.5 stars rounded up. John Darnielle has tricked me before - <i>Universal Harvester</i> sucked me in thinking it was going to be a horror novel, but it really wasn't. Well, maybe it'd be more accurate to say I thought it was going to be a GOOD horror novel; I think it still wanted to be horror but it squandered its excellent opening in not, y'know, being scary or interesting. Point is, I came into <i>Devil House</i> with my guard up -- the title and great retro-horror cover design give the impression of horror, and you can see how a different author might take it in that direction: true-crime writer (Gage Chandler) working on a book about two murders with overtones of some Satanic ritual moves into the house where the murders happened, and gets caught up in the supernatural residue of the crime, etc. etc. But that's not what Darnielle is interesting in, and I'm glad I knew to be skeptical of the book following the expected trajectory. A played-straight horror story in the right hands could have been good, but what Darnielle is actually doing is more interesting (for novelty's sake if nothing else).

Instead, we get a sort of meta-narrative, telling the story of the "Devil House" murders along with Chandler's research process into the case, as well as the story of a different crime which Chandler had written about in his career breakout; meditations on true-crime literature as a genre, ethically speaking; and, bizarrely, an extended pseudo-Arthurian legend, written in faux early modern English, which forms the middle of the book, ends in mid-sentence, and whose connection to and purpose in the narrative I have yet to remotely identify (really, y'all, anybody who figures that one out holler at me). Like I said, what it's doing is new and interesting, and probably would be more so if I were more immersed in true-crime as a genre, and the ending takes it in a cool direction. But, ultimately, it's trying to cover so much ground that it feels shaggy and unfocused at times (for real, what is up with the Arthurian stuff), which prevents me from giving it too high of a rating.

This is completely my fault for going into this thinking it was going to be a horror book without really knowing what this book is about. The book is about a true crime writer who moves into the house of where the crimes took place he is writing about. It follows the process of writing true crime. I ended up DNFing this book. I started getting extremely confused as the book is very literary and begins switching between 1st and 2nd person and also past, present, and another storyline. The other storyline is about the crimes that happened from his first book and it completely lost me and had nothing to do with the other storyline. I was genuinely so confused reading this book and got annoyed with the constant use of “you” in every sentence. This is mostly my fault though because I thought this book was something that it wasn’t so be aware of that going into this. It’s not for everyone but some people might enjoy this if this is more their thing.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC copy of this book.