The Good House

This is more suspense than horror, despite the predominant categorization, though personally speaking, I didn't get overly spine-tingly over the tense moments, despite my very visual mind letting me picture everything.

This is my first book by Due, and I am going to say that I love her writing style. I particularly love hearing a voice and dialects that aren't your typical American or British fare. Listening to the audiobook certainly helps and let me tell you, Robin Miles is amazing. Another addition to my list of favourite audiobook narrators. She powers through all the characters, male and female, and their distinctive accents, including and most especially, Grandma Marie's thick Creole. But as much as I enjoyed Due's writing style and even the back and forth leaps through time and perspectives, I eventually found myself wishing the main character, Angela, would finally catch up to the point everyone else had reached many chapters before. I also found this troubling because Angela seemingly forgetting her connection to her grandmother's voodoo is part of her jaunty character development, though Angela herself doesn't really grow throughout the story. She just... remembers when it is convenient, and spends the rest of the time lamenting the love that she let get away, her broken marriage, and the tragedy that set the current horrors of her life in motion. In other words, Angela really isn't a likable character. She's not particularly interesting either, nor a woman I can particularly relate to. I don't necessarily need to relate to or even like every character I read, but Angela just didn't have much going for her.

What the story did have for me was an interesting peek into the world of voodoo. Voudon is a misunderstood religion and it's often misused for the sake of Hollywood entertainment. I am no expert on the subject and, while I'm sure there was some element of entertainment in this story, I'd like to think it was done justice here.