Book Review: The Grip of It by Jac Jemc

A couple, Julie and James, move into a new home as a means of getting away from James’ gambling problems. Pretty quickly, the couple are tormented by strange occurrences - stains appear on the walls, bruises form on Julie’s body and they keep finding hidden spaces within the walls of their home. Together they try to investigate what is happening as more and more strain is placed on their relationship.

“We can lose ourselves behind a trapdoor, whether in our mind or in the house.”

If I had to use one word to describe this book, it would be: MEH. I was pretty excited for a haunted house tale, and at no point did I feel anything other than ambivalence. It wasn’t creepy, it wasn’t scary… it was just monotonous. The characters themselves didn’t help – boring, bland, unlikeable.

Short chapters are a great way of flying through a book, but in this instance, the short chapters were just too short? The narration went back and forth, with the story being told from both Julie and James’ perspective – and usually, I dig this, but combine it with the extremely short chapters and I just felt like I was constantly being taken out of the story. I couldn’t get absorbed and therefore could not care less about what was going on or what happened to these characters.

I often give off about how I don’t like ambiguity when I read a book – and that’s an unfair generalisation, because in some cases it can be done right. In this book… it is not. There’s TOO MUCH ambiguity and too many questions left unanswered and it just left me extremely frustrated.

It just wasn’t for me, I guess! And in this situation I was actually thankful for those ridiculously short chapters so that I could just get it over and done with!! 2.5 stars out of 5! Rounded down for goodreads because it doesn’t deserve a 3 from me… SAVAGE.