With the mention of the Saw movies and authors King, Katsu, and Golden in the description, not to mention the idea of a kind of escape room/nightmare house, I was excited to dig into this novel. It turned out to be... not what I'd expected.

Joe's story certainly pulls at the heartstrings. His wife was killed in a horrific accident, then Joe leaves his job (he's not lacking for money) to walk around the world and deal with his grief. Helen works for UNICEF, and the two of them meet in Barcelona - a fantastic setting. The premise is intriguing and exciting, but I feel like the description is misleading. While some of the challenges were creepy (and also disgusting at times), the story went off the rails for me when the dinosaurs showed up.

This novel didn't work for me, but it wouldn't prevent me from reading other books by this author.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
Expected publication date: June 24, 2025
Canadian horror author Jeremy Bates has delivered a pulse-pounding, fantastically horrifying summer thriller with his new standalone novel, “The No-End House”.
After his wife dies in a horrible accident, Joe Hadfield sets out to accomplish a lifelong goal- to walk across the world. When he makes it to Barcelona, he meets a woman by the name of Helen, who encourages him to try the infamous “No-End House” challenge. For the challenge, Joe and Helen must make their way through nine rooms in an historic and infamous mansion in the Gothic Quarter and, if they succeed, they will win five thousand dollars each but, if they lose, they risk losing their lives- and their souls.
“No-End House” was a non-stop thrill ride from the very first page. Reminiscent of Pennywise in Stephen King’s “It”, the “No-End House” creates an atmosphere where you are plagued by your deepest fears and confronting them head-on is the only way to come out alive- maybe. Every single room was more terrifying than the previous and it had me on the edge of my seat. Bates forces us to examine our broken inner child, and the fears that come with it.
Joe’s wife dying so tragically endeared me to him right away and his quest to walk across the world (where possible, of course) was engaging and intriguing. When he meets Helen, who is strange yet interesting in her own right, they instantly pair up to take on the No-End House together. Bates ensures that, just like Joe, readers are left deciding for themselves if Helen can be trusted, although she is likable enough that I wanted her and Joe to successfully survive the house and its horrors.
Can we talk about that ending, though? After Bates takes us on a horrific journey through nine rooms of terror, he hits readers with an unexpected, twisty-as-hell, surprising ending that literally had my jaw hitting the floor.
Bates has evaded my attention up to this point, though he has several novels under his belt, all in the horror genre but, if his other novels are anything like the No-End House, I will definitely be adding all of them to my list. “The No-End House” is sharp, scary and utterly unique and Bates has earned every one of my five, shining stars!

The no end house by Jeremy Bates, Joe Hatfield is walking around the world and is now in Barcelona halfway through his trip when he meets orange haired Helen. despite her clearly being interested in spending the night with him he goes back to his hostel he recently lost his wife and isn’t ready and can’t imagine being in a relationship with anyone else it’s that night when he’s woken up by two Australians talking about a haunted house in a $5000 payoff for getting through the whole thing without quitting something he mentions to Helen the next morning when he runs into her again. she is all in to doing it but Joe hesitates although it isn’t long before he finds himself in the parlor of Marquis Isabella. she’s explaining everything about The No Endd House and despite the contract stating if they lose they forfeit their souls with a nudge nudge and wink wink they both agree. they both believe this house exist for some type of entertainment whether it be YouTube Spanish television or whatever so they don’t take it seriously until it’s way too late. What starts out as a fun yet scary thing to do turns into a real life and death nightmare. Let me just say I have read many reviews about this book and a pet peeve of mine is when people use logic to explain their rating on a book that’s not steeped in reality and I found lots of people did this despite the fact this was an OMG mic drop ending And an awesome awesome read. Not to mention all the great pop culture references there were many times I didn’t know how they would get out of situations they were in and I really thought this was a smartly done very intelligently told horror story. I also want to say Helen as a partner in this type of situation at first it seems she was going to drag Joe down but soon he was lucky she was there although everything is explained in the end I just really enjoyed this book.#NetGalley,#KensingtonBooks, #TheBlindReviewer, #MyHonestReview, #JeremyBates, #TheNoEndHouse,

The No‑End House plunges readers into a phantasmagoric descent, equal parts magical realism, psychological horror, and surreal nightmare. With echoes of Stephen King’s unsettling atmosphere, this haunted‑house odyssey unfolds across nine increasingly grotesque “escape rooms” nestled in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter.
Bates orchestrates a dreamlike disorientation: each room collapses the boundary between memory, phobia, and supernatural menace. We, alongside Joe, are submerged into an active, fracturing world where fears materialize and twist. The pacing simulates a fever dream, slowly entrancing at first, then catapulting into hallucinatory terror.
This deliberate “weirdness” is central to the magical‑realist aesthetic: confusion, distortion, emotional rupture. It revives that uncanny sense of displacement, the very quality magical realism thrives on, melding the everyday with the impossible. Where some may argue the genre demands a gentler surrealism, here the brutal intrusion of the supernatural functions as a reckoning: Joe can no longer deny what he has stepped into.
Yet the novel is not without missteps. While the thematic trajectory and emotional tension are compelling, certain sequences, such as the extended dinosaur phobia room, feel incongruous, even indulgent.
Nevertheless, Bates’s vision remains largely effective. He channels visceral horror, trauma, and fear into a structure that feels like a livewired labyrinth, haunting in its design, personal in its cost. The No‑End House itself becomes a character: a shapeshifting altar to shame, grief, and terror. Fans of immersive horror, think Hostel crossed with King-style supernatural dread—will likely find this a darkly satisfying gauntlet
The No‑End House is an audacious hybrid, a haunting, hyper‑real haunted‑house novel that stumbles only when Bates indulges excess. Its surreal, phobic rooms summon real unease, and the emotional core anchors the supernatural with surprising depth. Though readers seeking literary magical realism may bristle at its heavy-handed horror, those open to genre-blending nightmares will find themselves both unsettled and entranced.

DNF'd, This book started off great until it took a turn and got weird. It felt so random and chaotic and it felt ruined to me. I was not expecting the turn of this book especially when the book mentions the vibes of Saw.

Let's take one of the best creepypastas every and make a uninspired retelling of it that doesn't even get close to how good the original was. Just like every time something like this happens I get my hopes up and then they are violently dashed against the ground.

Nine escape rooms in one haunted Barcelona mansion. There's a huge cash prize if you complete the game but no one has. Joe thinks he might be able to do it when he's egged on by Helen. He's running to escape his grief over the death of his wife she's a UNICEF worker. This is an interesting concept but ultimately it wasn't for me. Not Bates' fault -he's crafted a clever one. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Over to others.

I really tried to like this book, but the deeper in I got, the harder it was. It was very hard to connect or even root for these characters, and they had little depth. And while it does move at a quick pace, the writing did not hold my attention.

i am new to this type of book. but had read a really dark book recently by chance after being given it as a birthday gift and so i wanted to try another that sat itself i the horror genre. and i wasnt sure what to expect. and i think i need to read more as one thing for sure its certainly better than what the typical horror meant back in the day. when i new of horror it was just gore for gore reasons and definitely didnt make sense. where as this took my more internally horrific and mentally weirded me out which i kind of love in a book. i like my mind on stilts.
what i did love is that i had no idea where this was headed. to be honest i was reeling from the off wondering why when give the contract these two's first reaction to this was to "thanks, byeeeeeeee". but yes i didn't know where it would go or how it would end and for that i quite liked it as usually with my thriller books i have inklings or all over suspicions.
im still not quite sure how i would react to this book and im still not sure, haha. but for that i think i rather liked it and will definitely like to dip my toe into more.

I love bad horror movies, and I always think I will love bad horror books. But I don't. They just don't work the same.

This book seems to have gotten a lot of hate from reviewers, but I think it’s because they were expecting it to be something it was never intended to be. It reminded me a lot of the indie escape room horror movies that have come out in recent years. And this story is like a cross between a haunted house and an escape room. It doesn’t seem like a serious horror book because it’s not supposed to be. And yes, there were some cheesy aspects of it, but that just added to its charm, in my opinion. Really, if you’re looking for horror simply for the sake of horror (kind of like how Edward Lee operates), this book will likely be right up your alley. And FYI, the seemingly odd mention of the propeller blade death makes sense at the end, but you have to experience the whole book to understand it. All in all, I thought it was pretty entertaining, especially if you’re just looking for something horror-related to pass the time with.

Huge thanks to Kensington Publishing Group and NetGalley for sending me this ARC for review! All of my reviews are given honestly!

Thanks to Kensington publishing for providing me with this arc.

When I read the synopsis for this I was expecting a campy slasher, but was somewhat disappointed. I feel like this book takes itself way too seriously to a point where it just feels ridiculous. The whole premise doesn’t even seem logical to me: why would a (rich) man in his 40s who decides to walk across the world to deal with the grief of losing his wife and a 40 something year old woman that works for unicef enter this shady challenge for money neither of them need? Upon seeing the weird contract I think any sober adult would simply walk away.
Also, I strongly disliked the way Helen’s entire character was set up. I despised the way that immediately after she confides in Joe about her very extreme trauma they just start making out….. it didn’t fit the atmosphere at all and frankly was just ridiculous considering she just told him how she was abused by her own father.

This book dragged on for way longer than it had to. The challenges were extremely underwhelming, barely any violence, and the book just wasn’t scary at all. Frankly I find it insulting that it compares itself with a cult classic like Saw, but completely misses the nail.

I can not believe it took me this long to read anything by this author and by this author I mean Jeremy Bates , especially since I checked and found out that I had some of his books on my kindle that I brought when they was on sell, And since I've now read this one I've added it to my wish list , there was some some about how he wrote and how the atmosphere of the book that give it that some what of the creep and twisted feeling that I was looking for plus it was the perfect book to read doing a storm while it was raining outside my window . I think why I ended up liking it so much was because of the supernatural suspense that was though out the book , as well as how the author made you question everything from start to finish , it was like he was psychologically playing with you , making you feel like you was part of the story and every thing his characters was going though so was you.

Jeremy Bates' novel is bound to leave many people dissatisfied, on account of its touching on so many different aspects of one and the same story, coming to it from several different directions, with jarring variations in characterization, pacing, genre, and premises. It's not hard to see, from very early on, how this might confuse those readers who prefer a simple, straightforward plot, without disorienting mashups or seemingly unmotivated conceptual intrusions of one genre into another: what to make of a book that starts as an escape room challenge, transforms into a labyrinthine and messy, supernatural adventure with the promise of romance, then turns into sci-fi territory (there's apparently a visit to the Jurassic, then a trip to the far future), changes into a slasher (with two cameos by Jason Vorhees), flirts with dark fantasy (with a cannibal witch living in a mushroom), and ends up, finally, in typical grimdark style, with people fighting monsters to the death with katanas? Why deny it; such a book will definitely not be for everyone.

Yet for those of us who love dense plots, story-driven supernatural suspense, psychologically accurate characterization, liminal settings, jaw-dropping visuals, wild feats of the imagination, and twisty endings, "The No-End House" is pure gold! I myself loved the book from start to finish, realizing from early on it'd be an unorthodox excursion into grief horror, through an original spin on the familiar "escape room/haunted house attraction" trope; but I'd be lying if I said that I knew beforehand how far Bates' unbridled imagination would go from Barcelona, where the story begins, to entirely unknown, whole countries of brilliantly imagined terror and suspense. There is such a quick progression through the storyline, it's easy to feel curious about everything, and before you know it, you're deep into "The No-End House" and finding the experience hugely enjoyable. Occassionally, the action slows for the briefest of moments; this allows both readers and characters to breathe - before getting swept away again.

And the characters! They feel real, they talk like common people do (they even use slurs under stress, when they shouldn't; yes, there ARE such people in real life, so why not in fiction!), they think like you and me; and that's what made the ending hit so hard - a perfect WTF moment served right when you hardly expect it.

I recommend the novel very highly. It'll grab your attention from the first chapter, and if you like action, mystery, liminal horror, and shocking endings, you’ll enjoy "The No-End House" for sure

2 stars
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After the tragic death of his wife, Joe Hadfield decides to pack everything up and backpack around the world. During his latest stop in Barcelona, he overhears two backpackers talking about the ultimate haunted house challenge - a large gothic mansion, featuring nine rooms to escape, puzzles to solve, and a cash prize for anyone who makes it out. The catch? No one has ever completed the challenge. Joe is torn about participating, but he won't be alone. He'll be joined by Helen, a UNICEF worker whom he has befriended while in Barcelona. Helen's character was baffling; she's written to be in her 40s but acts like she's 20, and even goes as far as bullying Joe to join the challenge.

I went into this one pretty blind, and based a lot of my original opinions on the cover alone. While the story does start fairly eerie, it takes a turn when Dinosaurs and Jason Voorhies get intertwined into the plot...after that, I felt like I couldn't take the book as seriously as I had hoped. As the book went on, I found myself laughing more and more, while I had hoped to be on the edge of my seat. I haven't read anything else from this author, so I'm unsure if this is the typical writing style.

If you're looking for a slow-burning, psychological thriller that will leave you questioning the entire ending, I would recommend this. Unfortunately, this one just didn't meet my expectations!
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I want to thank Kensington Publishing | Kensington, Jeremy Bates, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an early copy of The No-End House in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions formulated are my own. The No-End House is scheduled to publish on June 24, 2025, You can pre-order your copy today.

[3.5/5] Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for an early copy of The No-End House! The premise of this book immediately caught my interest. I was obsessed with season 2 of the ScyFy anthology series (Channel Zero) that went by the same name, so I admittedly went in with preconceived ideas of what this book may be like. BOY, WAS I WRONG. I tore through this in a day. I had no clue where No-End House would take Joe and Helen next, and with increasingly bizarre interactions and consequences, I could hardly put it down. I had a lot of thoughts (and even more questions) flitting through my head, and by the final chapter, they all flew the roost. It felt like Bates was dipping his toes into tackling identity, reality itself, and it felt increasingly, frustratingly shallow (as did our main character, Joe) for most of the book. However, I feel there's redemption in this by the conclusion. It's hard to encapsulate all of my feelings without spoiling; I found it a solid read that will stick with me for a while, for better or worse!

#TheNoEndHouse #NetGalley

The blub for this book is seriously misleading. I went into it thinking I was getting an escape-room style horror novel. You know high-stakes puzzles, a heavy dash of psychological tension, and clever twists much like the SAW movies the book claimed to emulate . Instead, what I got was... a surreal look into how grief affects people, maybe? Although it came with a very healthy side of what the heck did I just read?

I mean right off the bat we are told that Joe's wife died because she walked into the still moving propeller of a Cessna airplane, that she had just landed on her last supervised flight towards her pilot's license. You mean to tell me all of the other times she has flown, she wouldn't have known the propeller takes time to stop moving? She wouldn't have known to avoid it? She couldn't HEAR it still moving? I almost just DNF'ed the book then because that's not horrific, that's death by stupidity.

To be fair, the book does offer some creative horror within its pages. The individual rooms are imaginative, ranging from eerie mind games to straight up survival scenarios, and there are moments that get under your skin. But sadly, even when things ramped up, the pacing felt off to me with the transitions from room to room feeling disjointed, leaving me more confused than invested. And while the overall atmosphere had flashes of potential, with a few scenes being genuinely unsettling, the often silly, awkward and just out of place dialogue would immediately yank me right back out of the story. This was in part because I struggled to connect with the characters as Helen came off as unnecessarily bossy and rude, while the Joe seemed oddly passive about it. Like even when his gut was screaming at him not to sign the contract, not to do the haunted house, he still was browbeat into doing it by her. This made their dynamic feel forced and unconvincing.

And that ending? Man did that leave me with questions than answers. I’m not against ambiguity, but this felt like a puzzle I was still missing pieces to. Did Joe actually make it out? Was he ever actually IN the maze to being with or was this some kind of grief induced psychosis?

All things considered, this book was giving me heavy internet creepypasta vibes, and honestly? This book should have stayed in the vault.

DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.

A fun and mostly unpredictable supernatural thriller that brought a new twist to an inescapable labyrinth style story. This was an easy read that had really great story pacing and kept me engaged and wanting to read more! I will say the characters really were making some stupid insufferable choices at the beginning of this one but I’ll let that slide given that the story was written well the rest of the way. I liked the relationship that built between Helen and Joe and enjoyed their creative problem solving throughout. The weak point of this novel for me was the ending, that was the most predictable part. It wasn’t explicitly a bad ending, it was just exactly what I thought would happen. Overall I really enjoyed this one and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a mind bending supernatural adventure!

Thank you Netgalley and Kensington Publishing for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. “The No-End House” will be published June 24, 2025.

Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for this free copy of "The No-End House."

Author Bates has the wildest imagination to come up with these 9 rooms of horrors and tests in the ultimate haunted house contest.

And the ending - OMG! I'm trying not to spoil anything by saying that I felt like I needed a prequel and/or sequel that would explain the ending.

So Joe left a very successful real estate career to literally walk around the world after the trauma of his wife's gruesome accidental death. He's in Barcelona, hears kids talking about a haunted house challenge, meets Helen at a bar, and they decide to find the house.

Crazy and morbid! Oh, and pay close attention to the chapter headings from the "Book of Nine."

I would thank Kensington Press and Netgalley for the ARC, but honestly, I can't. Ignoring the fact the book promised SAW and delivered Jurassic Park, but the real problem with this book is there was a slur about 25% in, the one used against the dwarfism community. It's 2025, horror writers don't need to use slurs to make us scared, the scene read wrong and cringe and weird, and the author doesn't belong to that community. It wasn't cool, isn't okay, and I wish I had my time back from reading this book.

Kensington Press, do better.