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3.31 AVERAGE
3.31 AVERAGE
I’m really glad that I picked this book up. Rosemary’s Baby is my all time favorite movie/book and after reading the synopsis I was sure that this would be a 5 star read.
Audrey was an interesting character and although most of the scenes in which she interacted with people was cringey and awkward I really enjoyed reading about her. Kudos to Sarah Langan on creating such an interesting character.
That aside the first portion of the book I was really engaged and was interested in the Brevairy apartment building. But then we kind of shift gears and focus more on Audrey’s back story and by the time we circled back to the horror elements of the story I just kind of wasn’t interested anymore. This book isn’t for everyone, but if you enjoy psychological horrors I think you would like this.
The premise sounded great: crazy architect builds houses of evil, blue-blooded geriatric Manhattanites occupy the only remaining buidling, young woman moves in and finds herself in a pickle. Unfortunately, most of the book deals with the heroine's declining mental health and unhappy childhood, with detours into the lives of her boss and ex-boyfriend. The potential spookiness was overshadowed by clunky pop-psychology. What a waste of a perfectly good haunted apartment building.
Sarah Langan is now on my list of favorite horror authors. What a fabulous creepfest! I wish I had time to say more.
This was a slow read for me. Interesting characters, and definitely disturbing.
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Mental illness, Suicide, Violence, Grief, Death of parent, Abandonment
Moderate: Cancer, Self harm, Sexism, Classism
Minor: Homophobia, Transphobia
I gave this book four stars because if the authors amazing ability to make her readers identify with her characters. I got a little lost mid end. Overall not best work, but still a good book.
A really fantastic gem of a horror novel. One of my new favorite horror authors.
In Bram Stoker winner, Sarah Langan’s third novel, Audrey’s Door, the reader is left with questions and feeling confused, which is never a good sign for a book. Audrey Lucas has a lot of problems: with a terrible upbringing from a drug-addicted and abusive mother, she managed to get herself an architectural degree and is pretty good at it, yet her mental status is certainly to be questioned; then there’s her boyfriend who she’s becoming close to but has commitment issues with, then he proposes and she just needs to get away from everything. Audrey moves into a new apartment that she finds at a record rent for New York in an old building known as the Breviary. Of course, there are a few caveats with moving in: she has to vetted by the landlord and tenants first to be a specific kind of person, and she apparently qualifies. Audrey loves the place, as it’s one of the last examples of Chaotic Naturalism still standing. After getting somewhat settled, Audrey then discovers that it was in her very apartment that a short while ago a mother killed herself and all her four children.
Audrey never gets a decent night’s sleep at the Breviary, plagued by strange dreams and nightmares. She wakes to find she has wet her bed (something she had problems with as a child) and that she has been busy in the night building a doorway out of boxes and packing tape, which will open to she knows not where. Then there are the strange tenants, who spy on her every move, and seem like they’ve lived there for centuries. As Audrey begins researching the history of the building, she finds it to be a unique and unusual commune for unique and unusual people. Then she discovers the number of deaths and suicides in the building and realizes she’s made a very big mistake. But with her job on the line and her sanity all but gone, she doesn’t know what to do.
Audrey’s Door won Sarah Langan the Bram Stoker Award once again in 2009, and while the novel definitely has its high points with its interesting characters, the down-spiraling of Audrey’s sanity, and the unusual plot; at the end the reader is left unsatisfied and wondering on the whole story, while this reader is wondering why the book won an award at all.
For more book reviews and exclusive author interviews, go to BookBanter.
Audrey never gets a decent night’s sleep at the Breviary, plagued by strange dreams and nightmares. She wakes to find she has wet her bed (something she had problems with as a child) and that she has been busy in the night building a doorway out of boxes and packing tape, which will open to she knows not where. Then there are the strange tenants, who spy on her every move, and seem like they’ve lived there for centuries. As Audrey begins researching the history of the building, she finds it to be a unique and unusual commune for unique and unusual people. Then she discovers the number of deaths and suicides in the building and realizes she’s made a very big mistake. But with her job on the line and her sanity all but gone, she doesn’t know what to do.
Audrey’s Door won Sarah Langan the Bram Stoker Award once again in 2009, and while the novel definitely has its high points with its interesting characters, the down-spiraling of Audrey’s sanity, and the unusual plot; at the end the reader is left unsatisfied and wondering on the whole story, while this reader is wondering why the book won an award at all.
For more book reviews and exclusive author interviews, go to BookBanter.
Audrey Lucas has never had things easy. Much of her life was lived on the road taking care of her bipolar mother. When the woman was finally committed, Audrey made her escape to New York City. Now with an architecture degree behind her, Audrey is ready to embark on the next phase of her life. She’s landed a position with a great architecture firm and found the apartment of her dreams: The Breviary is strangely within budget, but that could be due to the tragedy that took place in Audrey’s new apartment when the previous tenant killed her own children before committing suicide. The building itself, an architectural marvel, is enough to inspire Audrey. The fact that the apartment is beyond what she could expect in this area of the city is almost secondary. But The Breviary is hiding a secret, one that is decades old, and Audrey has been chosen as the one who can finally unleash the evil that lives within. Langan’s previous novels, The Keeper and Missing, have earned the author much-deserved praise and respect in the horror community. Once again, she delivers. Langan builds a scenario packed with a creepy atmosphere, suspenseful plot, and tangible characters with deep-seated issues.
A little different from the previous two books, this focuses mainly on the titular character, an OCD Nebraska girl with a rough past and insane mother. It's about her life, her problems, and her creepy new apartment building filled with creepy old crazy folks. The building is also evil and part of the Chaotic Naturalist movement, which I'm not dying to read more about. There was a slow patch in the middle, but, all in all, I quite liked it. Like always, a central theme is mother/daughter relationships, and Audrey herself has trouble relating to people, even the man she loves. But it's delightful, sad, personal, and nicely creepy.