Review: House and Garden

Book Title:   House and Garden

Author:  Deb Victoroff

Publisher:  Musa Publishing

Genre: Horror, suspense.

Heat Level- n/a

Length-  32 pages

Reviewer name:  Nikki

Rating-  4 Lightning Bolts 

Blurb:

An isolated country house on a parcel of overgrown land refuses to be gentrified by a girl from the city who is gradually terrorized by the nature that surrounds her.

Elise, a socially awkward professional single woman finally buys a piece of real estate – a house with a garden – which she feels she can shape to her own desires.  Her need to control her surroundings, her fatal flaw, will never be directed to a human partner.  Instead she turns her energy toward taming nature.

An odd-looking real estate agent has sold her the parcel after the previous owners have abruptly abandoned the house, a bungalow with a creepily over-grown garden.  As Elise attempts to weed and groom her property, it seems to fight against her.  Bugs bite her, thorns pierce her, gardening tools are ripped from her hands and mysteriously disappear.

She feels the dislike of the townsfolk toward the city people who keep buying up the countryside only to domesticate it to city tastes.  Are they behind the creeping dangers that assault her at every turn?  Or is there some larger malevolent force in play?


Review:  You may never look at your garden the same again. In fact, you may never want to enter your garden, in fear of the unknown terrors that might try to get to you....

All right, so maybe I'm not that scary, but House and Garden definitely makes your hair stand up and the goosebumps appear.  Elise has moved into a new home and is getting used to her surroundings. Strange occurrences keep happening, only getting weirder as this story goes on. Yikes!

The suspense and eerie element keeps up the pace. There's more narrative than dialog, which can get tedious at times. Elise didn't get my liking at first, but in the end she turned out okay.

The characters are quirky, mysterious and strange.  Elise keeps ending up in these predicaments that others find her. This is a quick, but good read. I never expected the twist at the end.


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