Angelica committed murder/suicide to end her troubles. What came next was worse than her tortured life. In purgatory, she is stalked by the one she killed with no way out.
Until one day, something beyond her control changes.
Crystal runs from her past to a new house, in a new town, in a nice neighborhood. She believes this will be the best new beginning for her little girl. Not long after moving, her daughter begins to act out of character and Crystal blames herself for the change.
Only Angelica knows the truth; that these women should not be in her house. Now she must find a way to stop what she started, to save the innocent and break her own bonds.
What’s up, fellow 9th circle dwellers? I’m back with a review of my second Theresa Jacobs book, which I much prefer over the first of hers that I read (The Zombie Effect).
The book opens with Angelica offing her husband and then herself in a bid to escape her life, only to be trapped as a ghost with her horrible husband in the same place. This is, for sure, one of the best prologues I’ve ever read. The concept was just the kind of hell that makes my blackened heart sing, and I thought it was a really good opener.
After this, we move on to single mother, Crystal, and her daughter Eden, who move into the house, unaware that the former occupants are still lurking. From here, we alternate between the living and the dead. I very much enjoyed the format and thought it was an interesting story-telling device. I was a little disappointed that the entire story wasn’t just about Angelica being trapped in a purgatory of her own making, as this concept was, by far, one of the more original ideas I’ve ever read. With that said, Crystal’s story was fine – it’s just that Angelica’s particularly piqued my interest.
My only real gripe with this book is the same as the main complaint I had about ‘The Zombie Effect’, and that is that quite often, we – the reader – are told or shown something, and then have to follow a character as they take time discovering the thing we already know. While I have seen this work in other books in a Chekhov’s Gun sort of way, I just don’t think the author has quite nailed the technique yet. Some parts were a little tedious to get through for me, but I’m pretty impatient so take that with a grain of salt.
The characters are pretty well fleshed out, even the minor ones, and Jacobs is good at describing settings and scenes too. I could see everyone and everything very clearly. The resolution is very satisfactory and the book closes with a nice, neat bow tying it all together. It’s quite fast-paced for the most part, and an easy read with some good horror elements. I enjoyed the ghosts. Overall, a quick and sometimes spiteful story, which I mean as a compliment.
If you’d like to get your hands on your own copy, you can find it HERE.
Happy Goat Horror 
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