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Thursday, October 4, 2018

BLOG TOUR & REVIEW: The House by the Cemetery by John Everson @johneverson @annecater @flametreepress


The House by the Cemetery
by John Everson

Thanks so much to Flame Tree Press and Anne Cater for this copy and stop on the blog tour!
If you're looking for an entertaining horror read that centers around a haunted house attraction and a witch that will do whatever it takes to get back... then this is the book for you.


Publisher: Flame Tree Press
Publish Date:  October 6, 2018
Paperback
256 Pages
Standalone
Genres: Horror, Paranormal

Rumor has it that the abandoned house by the cemetery is haunted by the ghost of a witch. But rumors won’t stop carpenter Mike Kostner from rehabbing the place as a haunted house attraction. Soon he’ll learn that fresh wood and nails can’t keep decades of rumors down. There are noises in the walls, and fresh blood on the floor: secrets that would be better not to discover. And behind the rumors is a real ghost who will do whatever it takes to ensure the house reopens. She needs people to fill her house on Halloween. There’s a dark, horrible ritual to fulfill. Because while the witch may have been dead... she doesn’t intend to stay that way.



John Everson is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of nine novels of erotic horror and the macabre, including his latest, REDEMPTION, the conclusion to his demonic Curburide Chronicles trilogy begun in COVENANT. Other novels include the Fountain of Youth erotic thriller THE FAMILY TREE, the Bram Stoker Award-nominated tour de force NIGHTWHERE, the Bram Stoker Award-winner COVENANT, its sequel SACRIFICE and the standalone novels THE 13TH, SIREN, THE PUMPKIN MAN, and VIOLET EYES. He also is the author of four collections of short horror fiction, including his latest, SACRIFICING VIRGINS.

John shares a deep purple den in Naperville, Illinois with a cockatoo and cockatiel, a disparate collection of fake skulls, twisted skeletal fairies, Alan Clark illustrations and a large stuffed Eeyore. There's also a mounted Chinese fowling spider named Stoker, an ever-growing shelf of custom mix CDs and an acoustic guitar that he can't really play but that his son likes to hear him beat on anyway. Sometimes his wife is surprised to find him shuffling through more public areas of the house, but it's usually only to brew another cup of coffee. In order to avoid the onerous task of writing, he occasionally records pop-rock songs in a hidden home studio, experiments with the insatiable culinary joys of the jalapeno, designs book covers for a variety of small presses, loses hours in expanding an array of gardens and chases frequent excursions into the bizarre visual headspace of '70s euro-horror DVDs with a shot of Makers Mark and a tall glass of Revolution Brewing's Anti-Hero IPA.

Learn more about John on his site,
http://www.johneverson.com/, where you can sign up for a direct-from-the-author monthly e-newsletter with information on new books, contests and occasionally, free fiction.

Want to connect? Follow John on Twitter
@johneverson

My Review:



OH hey - here's a dilapidated house by the cemetery with rumors of sacrifice and witches - let's make it into a haunted house attraction - surely nothing will go wrong, right?! 

This is one of those books that reminds me of those horror movies where we have the usual Benetton ad variety group of people, the somewhat cheesy dialogue and you just KNOW things are going to go wrong and get bloody.  There's the usual racial stereotypes - (hi Bong!) and that typical insulting back and forth that goes along with the characters in these types of situations.  Mike was an interesting character - so gullible, easy to brain wash and really thinks with the wrong head.  Really, it's like every horror movie that I've watched and have been highly entertained by!  My favorite part of the book was the final scenes within the haunted house attraction.  All the bloody goodness.

I could've done without the "romance" angle with one of the characters - it didn't really add or take away from anything in the book... just felt a little unnecessary.  While there's a diverse group of characters riddled throughout and pointed out, it didn't really feel out of place or any different than what you get from a B-type horror flick, which is why it didn't bother me.. we see this all the time and seemed a typical part of this type of read/watch.

What it comes down to is this - I was entertained and while I have a love for haunted attractions, I might stay away from a few this season after reading this book.

Entertaining and gory, this is a great read for the Halloween season.

★★★

  


2 comments:

  1. Thanks for hosting THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY on your blog, Chandra! I'm so glad you enjoyed "all the bloody goodness"!!!

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  2. Thanks so much for the Blog Tour support x

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