Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1004971 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 496 pages

Customer Reviews

Very gripping!
Co-written with Ted Dekker, I think this one of Frank Peretti's "darker" books.
A gripping and thought provoking book, with more than one hidden message behind the story. With many twists, you have no idea what to expect next!
The middle of the book loses you a little but you will soon find yourself drawn back in.
It is best not to know too much about the story. In essense it is about 2 separate couples who retreat to the "House" following the breakdown of their cars. After being stalked by a killer they try to escape the House.. and then it gets interesting and a little scary!!
Enjoy!

disappointing
As a big Peretti and Dekker fan, I was eagerly anticipating reading this book...however I was left hugely disappointed. I usually find both their books gripping and after reading them the only feeling of disappointment I have is that the story has ended. So I was excited to see what the merging of two of the masters of Christian fiction would produce. Initially the opening chapters of the book offered some optimism, however the story soon became dull. I found it hard to understand what was going on as it jumped around a bit, and as the story was ungripping this made it all the more harder to keep up. All the characters were poorly developed, so much so you felt no emotions towards them or their situations which ruined the whole book..it felt like they had begun with a good idea and then got lost in the middle. There was nothing in the story or characters that made me want to continue reading... the only thing that kept me going is the memory of books I have read in the past from these authors. Overall the book was a huge dissappointment, the ending offered the only twist in the whole book and it was this that has dragged up my rating to 2 stars rather than 1.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone especially Ted Dekker or Frank Peretti fans... its just a big fat disappointment.

The worst book I've read for a while...
I started this book with real enthusiasm. Although the characters weren't particularly interesting the piling on of strange situations kept me interested. It wasn't until I'd hit page 250 that I realised that there no real substance to the book. The characters don't develop, the plot becomes bogged down in cliches from horror and thrillers and there is a real sense of illogicality. Characters say things and then do the opposite. Easy routes out of the house are avoided. For example, near the beginning a car crashes through one of the walls of the house (creating a hole through which the characters could escape) but we are supposed to believe that the hole is so sealed round the car that there is no possible was they can escape that way. I forgave that one but these leaps of faith occur virtually every chapter. After exploring the cellar thoroughly throughout the book, we are supposed to believe that the only route out at the end is back through the cellar. As far as characterisation is concerned, there isn't any. There are conventional stereotypes of horror and thriller fiction; the tart, the psychologist with issues, macho men, mysterious cops, southern hicks, innocent children etc. The problem is this is one of those books where characters come and go so frequently you find yourself having to flip back through the book to remind yourself who they are. Some characters disappear for about a third of the book. Then they change identities and have clones of themselves appear which all adds to the confusion. By then end I didn't really care. The writing is average and clicheed. Even though there are really evil characters and supposedly terrifying situations there is not one swear word in the whole book. Unrealistic for a book trying to emulate the thriller/horror tradition. Characters will stop in the middle of being chased by the murderer to talk about the nature of good and evil- unrealistic. Overall an interesting idea is marred by the writers trying to do something more interesting than their talent allows. I've read somewhere that this is 'Christian fiction'. Not a good advertisement for a dying faith if this derivative book is a representative example.