≡ Read The Dead House Dawn Kurtagich 9781780622347 Books

The Dead House Dawn Kurtagich 9781780622347 Books

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The Dead House Dawn Kurtagich 9781780622347 Books

Everyone knows about the Johnson Incident - people died, and one person went missing who was never found. Conspiracy theorists believe the culprit was Kaitlin Johnson. Only problem is, Kaitlin doesn't exist. According to Dr. Lansing, she's just a product of trauma, an alter ego created by Carly Johnson, a girl suffering from dissociative identity disorder.

The Dead House is a collection of transcribed interviews, videos, emails, witness testimonials, and journal entries cataloging the events leading up to the Johnson Incident, with special attention paid to Kaitlin's private journal:

"Lansing can't tell me I don't really exist - product of trauma and all that - when my thoughts and feelings are as real as Carly's.
I am real.
I exist.
They won't kill me send me away."

Throughout the entire book Kaitlin remains both a sympathetic and complex character. Her existence, as well as her mental state, is constantly called into question:

"I'm the thing in the dark, just like the Viking used to tell me. I'm the creature coming from the basement, the thing under the bed. I have nothing to fear in the dark. I am the dark."

This book offers some moments with serious spook factor. It's thrilling, fast paced, dark and surprisingly morbid.

The author brings a delicate hand to her prose, finding a balance between simplicity and lyrical interludes:

"The windows gazed across the landscape, each fringed by the crumbling slate roof like eyelids. Even the console brackets had the sunken, eroded texture of all of time. The weather vane, too, stood rusted and old, no longer a thing of pride, but a creaking slice of metal warped into no definite shape by years of long corrosion."

The book's only weakness is its formatting. While it's obvious what was intended (with its use of note papers, open journals, and stationary), some of the alignment is distracting. Overlaying straight text atop an image of crumpled paper looks demonstrably fake. The same goes for dropping straight text over a piece of paper that's significantly off-kilter; it doesn't look right, and that moment of distraction pulls the reader out of the story. Further, the stock photos used as still shots of video footage were campy and not quite believable. This is a tedious criticism - an observation about the book that will likely bother only a few select readers.

The Dead House is a gripping psychological thriller that gets darker with every page and leads the reader down a path that begins with safe speculation and ends with horrifying truths.


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The Dead House Dawn Kurtagich 9781780622347 Books Reviews

**Possible spoiler material below**

An epistolary novel of sorts, The Dead House opens with the reader being brought into an ongoing investigation into "The Johnson Incident", decades after it first occurred. This incident involved a fire at Elmbridge High School, the death of three students and the disappearance of another. In the rubble, Kaitlyn's diary is found, taking the reader back to the events that unfolded prior to the fire. As other evidence is found, the story is then pieced together through not only the diary entries, but also transcripts from interviews and recovered video footage. Through these mediums, we learn the story of Kaitlyn and Carly Johnson, orphaned after a car accident takes both their parents... but what really happened? While Kaitlyn and Carly insist they are in fact two different souls born into one body and have always been so, Dr. Annabeth Lansing believes the reality is Carly is suffering from DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder, aka Multiple Personality Disorder), having created Kaitlyn in the wake of the traumatic deaths of both her parents. So what's the real story? That reveals itself little by little as the story progresses. Meanwhile, the reader gets to know Kaitlyn and Carly through diary entries and Post-It Note exchanges (since they can't occupy the body at the same time, this is the only way they know to communicate with each other) until one day Carly's notes to Kaitlyn just stop and Kaitlyn has to figure out what happened.

I know the author, Dawn Kurtagich, through the Booktube community on Youtube and have followed her vlogs throughout the development of this novel -- from the writing of it through to its actual publication -- so of course I was curious to check it out once it hit the US! I was also compelled to read The Dead House after Dawn shared some of her inspirations for the story, some medical struggles she went through that echoed experiences in my own life. One bit that especially caught my attention was her revealing that part of the inspiration for Carly and Kaitlyn came from a portion of Dawn's own life, where she struggled with inversion syndrome, a condition that causes one to be awake during the night instead of the day. I had never heard the term inversion syndrome but I do have Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder (alternately known as Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, depending on where you read about it, its acronym still being DSPS) which, in layman's terms, makes a person basically have the sleep pattern of nocturnal creatures such as bats or owls.

Man, I struggled with what to rate this one! I kept going back and forth because there were parts I really liked and then other parts that felt really muddled and I couldn't quite make out what was going on all the time. In a way, the murkiness of some of the scenes worked in the story's favor because we get into themes of depression, possible psychosis, feelings of mania... but then I was still left feeling like "I'm sorry but I really wish that was explained a little bit better." But one thing I was really impressed with was just how many layers there are to the characters and the story, that you don't really consider until you put the book down for a bit and think about it. It can already be tricky to follow in parts because of two people fighting for space in one body, but then Kurtagich introduces the idea of What if one of those people in that one body additionally suffered a possible possession by an outside evil spirit? Dang, now that poor body is seeming REALLY crowded!

As far as being a YA thriller, the creepy factor didn't really kick in for me until about 150 pages in, when Kaitlyn first starts having those freaky nightmares. While the ending chapters were fast paced and entertaining, there was something to them that was a little unsatisfying. It also frustrated me (but also kinda amused me lol) that Kaitlyn kept looking at different people saying "they're seriously f-d up and, okay, maybe seemed like they wanted me dead... but they're good people really."

The format is really fun and definitely encourages one to keep reading to find out the real story. I found Ari to be a pretty intriguing character and while I wasn't really feeling Naida at first, she grew on me. I wish there had been a little more to the story of Haji.

The diary entry on page 189 (hardback edition) -- "Fifteenth Entry" -- felt to me like a pretty accurate metaphor for chronic depression and the feeling of being trapped inside your own mind.

TRIGGER WARNING FOR READERS This story does bring up topics of self harm / cutting, and characters having suicidal thoughts.
Wow...wow...wow. I did not expect to like this book as much as I did. When I first started it I didn't think I was going to like the way the book was written. The story is told through diary entries, doctor's notes, police notes, video transcriptions, and other things like that. So I really thought I would get annoyed and not get half of the story that I would want but I was so wrong. I was so wrapped up in this book that I was well over halfway through it before I even realized it.

The whole Carly/Kaitlyn in one body thing was kind of awesome. One was the day and one was the night which seems kind of sad. Sad, in that one will never be able to see the stars and the other will never feel sunlight. They seemed to have a good system for awhile, though. That is until Dr. Lansing came along and ruined their setup. I agreed with Kait, I did not like that woman. I did spend a good portion of the book asking if Carly/Kait was real or if they really were crazy. I'm not sure if that question was ever answered.

With the way, this story was told it felt like I was watching a movie. I was getting so many perspectives that it was more like watching a different scene. Kait kept such in-depth journal entries that it was like reading a regular book instead of a diary. There was no dear diary here there was just Kait and Dee. Naida's camera footage ended up being awesome scenes too. Some of the scenes in the actual dead house were down right creepy. Definitely nightmare fuel.

I highly recommend this book to all of the horror lovers out there. It's worth a read.
Everyone knows about the Johnson Incident - people died, and one person went missing who was never found. Conspiracy theorists believe the culprit was Kaitlin Johnson. Only problem is, Kaitlin doesn't exist. According to Dr. Lansing, she's just a product of trauma, an alter ego created by Carly Johnson, a girl suffering from dissociative identity disorder.

The Dead House is a collection of transcribed interviews, videos, emails, witness testimonials, and journal entries cataloging the events leading up to the Johnson Incident, with special attention paid to Kaitlin's private journal

"Lansing can't tell me I don't really exist - product of trauma and all that - when my thoughts and feelings are as real as Carly's.
I am real.
I exist.
They won't kill me send me away."

Throughout the entire book Kaitlin remains both a sympathetic and complex character. Her existence, as well as her mental state, is constantly called into question

"I'm the thing in the dark, just like the Viking used to tell me. I'm the creature coming from the basement, the thing under the bed. I have nothing to fear in the dark. I am the dark."

This book offers some moments with serious spook factor. It's thrilling, fast paced, dark and surprisingly morbid.

The author brings a delicate hand to her prose, finding a balance between simplicity and lyrical interludes

"The windows gazed across the landscape, each fringed by the crumbling slate roof like eyelids. Even the console brackets had the sunken, eroded texture of all of time. The weather vane, too, stood rusted and old, no longer a thing of pride, but a creaking slice of metal warped into no definite shape by years of long corrosion."

The book's only weakness is its formatting. While it's obvious what was intended (with its use of note papers, open journals, and stationary), some of the alignment is distracting. Overlaying straight text atop an image of crumpled paper looks demonstrably fake. The same goes for dropping straight text over a piece of paper that's significantly off-kilter; it doesn't look right, and that moment of distraction pulls the reader out of the story. Further, the stock photos used as still shots of video footage were campy and not quite believable. This is a tedious criticism - an observation about the book that will likely bother only a few select readers.

The Dead House is a gripping psychological thriller that gets darker with every page and leads the reader down a path that begins with safe speculation and ends with horrifying truths.