These Familiar Walls: A Novel by C.J. Dotson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars rounded up**
These Familiar Walls is a Paranormal Horror Thriller from C.J. Dotson. This story follows our MC, Amber, in two timelines.
The present is 2020, and Amber, along with her husband, Ben, and their two children, move into Amber’s childhood home. Amber has inherited the house after her parents have been murdered, inside the house, by Nathan, one of Amber’s friends from her teen years.
Amber also lost her sister, Hannah, along with her brother-in-law, in a house fire not long ago. It’s clear from the start that Amber is working through some things, and perhaps her childhood home, full of unpleasant memories, isn’t the best place for her during this difficult time.
We also get Amber’s perspective from 22-years before, in 1998, when she first befriends Nathan, the boy who would grow up to become a murderer.
Nathan exhibits classic signs of the homicidal triad, including cruelty to animals (on page) and fire-setting. I’m not sure what his proclivity for bed-wetting was, but I’m gonna guess it happened once or twice.
Needless to say, Amber’s parents weren’t crazy about her hanging around with the disturbed boy next door, and it cause a lot of contention in their household. A fact Amber has never forgotten.
These scenes from 1998, while interesting, particularly the interactions involving Amber’s little sister, Hannah, did slow down the pace for me a little bit.
The spooky stuff in the house kicks off fairly quickly, and the sections of the past sort of brought it down for me until about the 60% point.
I did really enjoy the unsettling things happening to Amber within the house in the present perspective. There were a lot of visions connected to the past, and creepy scenes involving the mirrors that definitely got under my skin.
I was torn initially on how to rate this, because I found portions of it to be distasteful. This needs explanation, but I’m not sure how much I can say without spoiling things. The more I’ve thought about it though, the more I have to doff my cap to the author in my uncomfortableness.
I found one of the violent, pivotal scenes in this book abhorrent. However, I am a Horror Reader. I’ve definitely read wayyyy more messed up stuff than this, so I have to think that the author did a great job eliciting these emotions from me. I must have been so sucked in, so involved in the lives of this family that it made it extra impactful. Either way, it’s uncomfortable, or was for me.
I do believe that was the intention of the author, of course, for me to feel this way. Therefore, I can’t hold it against them, my own emotional hangups. They did what they set out to do, and well done for that.
I just needed to get over that mental hurdle and appreciate the novel’s ability to put me in an uncomfortable place and keep me there. By the time everything is revealed though, that emotion lifts and then we get to the heart of the paranormal of the story.
I felt that was executed well. It’s hard sometimes to translate those kind of concepts, what may be in author’s head onto the page, but I think Dotson did a good job. While some aspects were predictable, I think overall it’s an engaging and gripping read.
Thank you to the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, for providing me with a copy to read and review.
I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read from Dotson so far, and am looking forward to more in the future!