The historic district of Jardine, New Mexico seems like the perfect place to live for the Perry family. Julian and Claire Perry and their two children, Megan and James, have just recently moved into a beautiful Victorian house which is bigger and much, much nicer than their old house. They are ecstatic to be living in the house, but something isn't right...Something is definitely odd.

The neighbors seem reluctant to visit. They seem so strange and somewhat standoffish towards the Perry family, although not actually hostile toward them. Claire just can't shake the feeling that someone is watching her. Teenage Megan receives increasingly menacing and obscene texts, and she inexplicably starts to carry out the titillating commands of an unseen presence. Ten-year-old James has a sudden onslaught of dreadfully bizarre nightmares and unsettling, ghostly visions.

Then there is the strangely sickening odor emanating from a specific corner of the basement. It smelled very strongly of soil, but there was absolutely nothing in the basement that could cause such a peculiar smell - at least nothing visible. It's a pity no one warned the family about the house; someone really should have. Now it's much too late. Because the darkness at the bottom of the basement stairs is rising...and there will be no escape.

I really enjoyed this book. In my opinion, it was a wonderfully creepy mix of an understated, almost mundane life being haunted by an inexplicably horrific supernatural presence. I appreciated that the horror in this story was well-maintained right until the end.

I find that so often the horror in some of the books that I've read either falls apart towards the end, or becomes entirely unbelievable; at least for me. I do love reading books about haunted houses, though. This is the third book by Bentley Little that I've read, and he is an author that I definitely want to read more from in the future. I give The Haunted by Bentley Little an A+!

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Writers are supposed to show and not tell. And when it comes to horror, it's even more important that you slow down and give your reader atmosphere and relatable characters. You can't just say, "She was scared." You have to give us reason to BE scared.

Bentley Little fails at this on every level.

This entire book is telling, not showing. There are pages and pages and pages of narrative with no action and no dialog. And when Little does stop to show us something, it's completely inconsequential. For example, he spends several pages showing us his kids arguing over McDonalds vs Taco Bell for lunch, or giving us his opinion on protestors in the park (even though it has nothing to do with the storyline), but when an intruder shows up, scares the narrator into calling the police, and is subsequently arrested, the entire incident is narrated as a boring, matter-of-fact sequence of events in two or three paragraphs. Incident after incident in this haunted house, and yet Little never bothers to slow down and really give us a story we can sink into. The entire book feels very half-hearted, as if the author had a deadline but no real interest in the story or the characters. Very disappointing.

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