Oh, hello, spoopy babies. It’s time for another spoopy book review. This time we are talking about The Haunted, the latest release from one of my favorite YA horror authors, Ms. Danielle Vega/Rollins (probably best known for being the author of The Merciless series). This one, like the The Merciless and Survive the Night, is published under the name Vega and released with Razorbill, and is apparently only book one in what is shaping up to be a Haunted series.
The Haunted follows Hendricks Becker-O’Malley, the new girl in town. She’s super cool and effortless in her boyfriend jeans and messy bun, but things aren’t so cool at home because as it turns out her house is totally freakin’ haunted.
She finds out after starting at her new school that apparently the house has a name and is notorious around town because of all the dark things that have happened there. I’m likening this to something like when Christina Ricci moves into Casper’s house. They even have a moment where all the kids from school are clamoring to come over for a party just because they really want to see this house and see if it’s as creepy as everyone says it is. The difference here is that the kids at school are quick to accept Hendricks into their social circles rather than totally ostracizing her for being the new kid who lives in a haunted house.
I’m thinking it has something to do with her boyfriend jeans and messy bun. And maybe also her trendy name. There are no cat jokes to be had here. Although at one point, one of her classmates and potential love interests does make a joke about her and her brother’s names: “Hendricks and Brady sounds like the name of an Etsy store that sells macramé plant holders and cross-stitched pillowcases.”
I mean, is he wrong, though? I practically snorted when I read it.
The Haunted follows Hendricks as she starts discovering the scary things going on around her house and then watches them escalate to an out of control level. It starts with the usual—bumps in the night, creepy feelings, thinking she’s hearing voices. It escalates to some mid-level ghostly activity, like the nanny getting locked in a closet or Hendricks having some super realistic visions that may or may not be hallucinations, or all the glass bottles in the wine cellar exploding on her simultaneously. (In my professional opinion, I’d rank that at a mid-to-high level ghostly activity, but slightly on the high side. Please tell me you’re picking up on how thickly I’m laying down the sarcasm right now, I’m not a professional anything.)
It eventually culminates with full blown evil ghost attacks, with the spirits physically harming the occupants of the house, including a pretty vicious attack on Hendricks’s baby brother who co-runs her Etsy shop.
Throughout the book, her mysterious neighbor, Eddie, seems to be linked to her house in some way, and in a typical broody bad boy hot/cold act, he alternates between wanting to help her with her haunting and wanting her to get the hell away from him until he finally settles on helping her and revealing why he is so closely tied to the house. But of course, it turns out the mystery goes much deeper than we initially think and has more twists than expected.
There’s also a running thread with Hendricks’s PTSD following a physical attack and then some pretty severe emotional abuse from her ex-boyfriend at her old school. It serves to add some doubt to her stories when she starts seeing and hearing things around the house because they could be attributed to hallucinations brought on by her trauma, and bring a bit more depth to a character who is struggling to remember who she is outside of being “Grayson’s girlfriend”. (Why is everyone’s name in this book so trendy? Hendricks, Brady, Grayson, Portia, Raven, Vi. Eddie seems to be the only one with a name that doesn’t sound like it could double as a product name for some lacy bra company that sells exclusively online.)
There are a lot of things to like about this book: it focuses on ghosts, first of all. I love ghosty stuff. We all know that. It’s a pretty classic haunted house tale, with a few little Vega-style twists. It also has that trademark quick-witted, sarcastic humor that I’ve come to expect from Danielle Vega and her characters, so I really enjoyed that, as well.
I’ll warn you of this, though: this book is heavy on the tropes. Eddie is the typical Bad Boy with a Heart of Gold trope (which y’all know is one I don’t mind much) right down to his ever-present leather jacket and Zippo lighter. Portia and Raven are kind of the popular girl trope, with a few twists to make them a bit more of the artsy/hipster-y type of popular girl, which seems to be a thing now. Connor, another potential love interest of Hendricks’s, is the quintessential sweet, innocent, everyone-likes-him-he’s-such-a-good-guy-and-friends-with-everybody trope. (Gotta admit, he comes across as a bit of a brainless meathead when they run into Eddie in a pizza shop and while Eddie is speaking to Hendricks in front of him and he can clearly see Eddie is not bothering her, he busts out with the “IS HE BOTHERING YOU?” line to try to look tough.)
They go to visit a lady who owns a spiritual/crystal shop a couple towns over and she ends up being a total witchy/hippie trope (I mean, I liked her, though). Hendricks’s parents are the typical YA absentee parents trope, constantly having to attend iMpOrTaNt MeEtInGs in the city and leaving Hendricks to deal with a haunted house on her own.
Even the plot feels a little trope-y, because it’s this kind of typical “the ghosts want revenge” thing, and at some points the ghosts are more or less outlining their demands and I found myself thinking—as I often do with horror books/movies when they start bringing up the ghosts’ movitavtions—okay, but why? Why would this be what they want, or why would this be what would satisfy them as ghosts? Other than just to fit into the trope or kind of typical vengeful ghosts mold.
Now I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing! It was still a fun read. It was enjoyable, and sometimes that’s what I’m looking for out of a book. Not everything has to be earth-shattering or be a new favorite. I had a good time reading it, and in general, I tend to enjoy Danielle’s work. That’s saying a good bit in my book (no pun intended). But, I just want to make you aware that if you’re going into it, be ready for a lot of tropes. If you love tropes, then this is right up your alley.
I did kind of enjoy the thread about Hendricks and her issues with her former boyfriend. It felt like a much more serious issue couched in an otherwise fun, ghosty read. Domestic abuse and relationship abuse is a serious issue and sometimes gets overlooked in teens, so I appreciated that Vega addressed it and really highlighted how it can affect your life going forward, even as you try to move on and begin to heal. Hendricks had some really strong moments, like when she finally blocked her ex and when she started to regain control over her identity outside of just being a counterpart to someone else, and that was great to see.
Although it’s not entirely fair and I know it, I think I’ll always low-key find myself comparing anything Danielle Vega puts out to The Merciless, and the way that I felt when I first read that. Again, this is totally unfair. They’re not a part of the same series, they are their own separate entities that exist individually, and I could have been in a totally different mindset when reading The Merciless. But that series is one of my favorites, so it always kind of ends up creating these certain expectations for me. I have come to terms with the fact that no other book or series Vega releases is going to ever be quite like that again, but I thought we could at least channel it to some extent in The Haunted since it’s the beginning of a new series. But along the way, I found myself thinking it was much more trope-y (though I’d be lying if I said The Merciless didn’t have its fair share of tropes—I suppose everything does, to some extent), and that the plot wasn’t quite as original, and the twists weren’t as shocking and awesome as the twists and turns in The Merciless series. (The final twist with Brooklyn in The Merciless will probably always be one of my favorites.)
This one, despite being billed as “the scariest book I’ll read this year”, didn’t scare me so much as it interested me. The only part of it that was scary for me was that I know how Hendricks feels, as I’ve also had unexplained happenings in my home, so I know how disconcerting that can be. Without that relatability, I’m not sure how scary I would have found it, largely in part due to the tropey-ness of the ghosts and the plot.
So overall, I liked The Haunted, but I didn’t feel like it knocked out of the park or that it was my new favorite book or anything. If I were to play the star-rating game, I’d probably give it three and a half out of five stars. Because I believe in half stars.
If you’re curious about my thoughts on any of Danielle Vega/Rollins’s other books, I’ve talked about quite a few of them on my blog, so you can check that out here:
Mini Reviews: The Merciless, The Merciless II, & Survive the Night by Danielle Vega
Book Review: The Merciless III by Danielle Vega
Book Review: Burning by Danielle Rollins
Book Review: Stolen Time by Danielle Rollins
What did you guys think? Did you read The Haunted? How did you like it? Did it scare you? Did you enjoy it more or less than The Merciless series? Let me know in the comments! As always, I’d love to hear from you. <3