Spooky Little Book Club Review: “The Invited” by Jennifer McMahon

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When you live in the Halloween world long enough, you eventually get asked if you would live in a haunted house.

This post contains affiliate links. See the end of this post and/or my disclaimer for more.

(Um, I’m pretty sure I already do, actually…)

But would I intentionally build a haunted house to live in? Now that’s another story…and one that we explored in the summer 2019 read of the Spooky Little Book Club: “The Invited” by Jennifer McMahon:

In a quest for a simpler life, Helen and Nate have abandoned the comforts of suburbia to take up residence on forty-four acres of rural land where they will begin the ultimate, aspirational do-it-yourself project: building the house of their dreams. When they discover that this beautiful property has a dark and violent past, Helen, a former history teacher, becomes consumed by the local legend of Hattie Breckenridge, a woman who lived and died there a century ago.

With her passion for artifacts, Helen finds special materials to incorporate into the house–a beam from an old schoolroom, bricks from a mill, a mantel from a farmhouse–objects that draw her deeper into the story of Hattie and her descendants, three generations of Breckenridge women, each of whom died suspiciously. As the building project progresses, the house will become a place of menace and unfinished business: a new home, now haunted, that beckons its owners and their neighbors toward unimaginable danger.

With our summer theme of haunted house, I was curious to see what book we would end up reading having just completed “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson last winter. It was a very tight race, but I was thrilled when this recent release won out because the idea of someone building their own haunted house completely intrigued me.

If you read along with us but aren’t on Facebook, this blog post is your chance to discuss the book! Below is my review, plus the four questions we discussed in the Spooky Little Book Club:

 

What I Liked

“The Invited” was a fascinating modern-day tale of what happens when you mess with things you don’t understand. Every character in the book learned this lesson on some level – Helen by bringing objects with dark pasts into the home she was building with her husband, Nate; Nate’s quest to photograph the white doe; Olive’s journey to discover what happened to her mother; Dustin’s assumptions about his wife’s extra-curricular evening activities; Riley’s desire to discover Hattie’s treasure; and even Hattie’s journey to be reunited with her daughter and granddaughter.

The world created in “The Invited” sucked me in quickly, which made this an easy read. I found myself anxious, esp. in the final 100 pages, to learn how everything was going to end. I liked the build of the two main characters, Helen and Nate, slowly being haunted by their land and home-in-progress. Each one obsessing over their respective details felt like a story of a haunting within a haunting.

 

What I Disliked

Early on, I disliked the multi-narrative perspective of the book as we jumped from one character to the next to tell us the story. However, that faded as the book progressed, and I found myself excited to jump from story to story to see what happened next.

I also disliked that this book left me wanting more. I got a great story about a haunted house in progress and the interesting people creating it, but I definitely wanted to dig into their lives deeper than the book allowed.

 

Would I Recommend It?

I would! While it isn’t the most complex book I’ve read, it’s a fun, spooky story that goes down easy. It’d be the perfect read for October!

 

Discussion Questions:

If you’ve read “The Invited” before or read it for the book club, you can join the discussion in the comments of this blog post by answering one of these questions OR sharing your own mini-review of the novel!

  1. What did you like best about “The Invited”? What did you like the least?
  2. How do you think the multi-perspective narration changes or adds to this story?
  3. If you had to trade places with one character, who would you choose and why?
  4. What are your thoughts on how this book ends?

 

 

SPOOKY LITTLE BOOK CLUB FALL 2019 PICK

The fall 2019 pick of the Spooky Little Book Club will be announced in the Facebook group on Sunday, Sept. 1. Our theme for the fall is a novel set in Salem, which I’m excited for! I’ve already got one book I want to recommend…mostly because it’s been sitting on my nightstand for well over a year now, begging to be read.

If you’re on Facebook, I encourage you to join us over there so you can also be a part of recommending and voting for books each season as well as join in the other book and Halloween fun we share!

You can also learn more about the Spooky Little Book Club, including the past books we’ve read, in this blog post.

Looking for more books about haunted houses? I’ve got a list of 19 right here!

 

Happy reading,

 

 

This post contains affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and make a purchase, Spooky Little Halloween will earn a small commission for the referral at no cost to you. Read more about affiliates & disclaimers here. I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. 

Miranda | Spooky Little Halloween

Miranda is the Houston-based writer, blogger, and Halloween lover behind Spooky Little Halloween, the blog celebrating October 31st all year long. Her favorite Halloween things include pumpkin guts, chocolate bars in her trick-or-treat pail, real haunted houses (including the one she lives in!), and historic cemeteries.

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