Synopsis
Kenzie Sampson is home on Christmas break during her first year in college. She’s had more than the usual trouble adjusting to her new environment away from home, but she’s not about to tell her family, who have had enough to worry about, including plenty they haven’t told her. Worse yet, Kenzie discovers that just because you don’t believe in ghosts doesn’t mean they don’t exist…and she doesn’t know how to deal with them or her own demons as she adjusts to the old house that’s her family’s new home
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My Review
I hardly ever do this…but A SPOILER is included in this review. Well it’s not a spoiler of sorts, but it’s something I was thinking about when reading this book, and I have to include it as it’s my own thoughts on what happened in this book. I’ll tell you when I include it, so if you don’t want to read it, you can just skip it.
Old House is the new book from Jade C. Jamison and because she is so lovely, she has sent me an ARC copy of it, so here is my review!
Jade starts the book with a prologue which instantly grabbed my attention and got my intrigued about what was happening or had happened to the person involved. It’s a bit of a mystery. But you do get to see who the prologue is about and it makes a bit more sense further into the story.
Kenzie is back from college for Christmas and since she’s been away, her family uprooted from Colorado Springs to the mountains an hour away to a house they inherited from her Uncle. Kenzie is confused over why they had to move, but is filled in by her sister the next day. You instantly find out that something bad has happened to Kenzie in her first semester of college, yet you don’t know just what has happened yet. She hasn’t told her parents and before she can tell them, she has to come to terms with it herself. She also needs to tell them she’s not going back to college either.
Your house is one place that is meant to be safe to you, but to Kenzie it isn’t. Her bedroom makes her feel uneasy and now that she’s had a pretty vivid dream about a lost and abused young girl, it makes her room feel even more claustrophobic to her. I really felt for Kenzie. Something bad happened to her at college and coming home was meant to bring her closer to her family again and make her feel safe and protected, but it’s turned her upside down and she’s scared of her room and what might be in it.
She feels that this girl is trying to communicate with her and Kenzie is hell bent on helping her ‘to the other side’ if only to stop the dreams and the uneasiness she feels in her room, and get her room to feel safe to her again. But does she succeed? Does the ‘spirit’ leave her alone?
You finally get to know what happened to Kenzie, and I kind of knew that was what happened. What with the dreams that she was getting. In a way, both the girl and Kenzie, to me, were linked through some sort of memories from their traumas. She also began to have dreams about her uncle and a little girl running away. Pretty weird right? It seemed the room held memories for the girl and Kenzie which has more than likely been locked away until now, until her return.
I loved her relationship with Adam. He seemed like the best friend you could ask for and he, in some ways, believed Kenzie – even witnessing to some extent with the painting, what she was telling him about the house, especially the weird aura in her room. I don’t want to write too much about his time with Kenzie, but you’ll have to read and find out what happens.
SPOILER
Now with her emotional trauma and everything she thinks is happening in her room, I did suspect it could all be in her head and it might be her doing everything, instead of a spirit, which Kenzie is certain is haunting her room. When Adam came to stay, he told her she sleep walks a couple of times before coming straight back to him and back to sleep, so it got my thinking she could have been changing the painting every time she got up, as she seemed pretty freaked out that it kept changing all the time. As I’ve mentioned, she dreams about the girl and her uncle, whom I thought was involved somehow, and I wasn’t wrong at all. You do get to find out what exactly happened to Kenzie and it does make sense in the end about how emotionally damaged – if that’s the right word – she is.
SPOILER OVER
Jade is great with planting little hints in this book. It made me really think about what is happening to Kenzie and makes you think about different scenarios that could be throughout the book. I think I was spot on with figuring out what really went on, albeit, it took a while, but when I really thought about it, I gasped when I was right. It’s all explained at the end for those who didn’t really understand what had happened, which was great as I really did want to know if unraveled the truth behind her trauma and paranoia of the ‘spirit’ in her room.
For one who never reads horrors – as I get spooked pretty easily – I was captivated by this book from the beginning. The more I read, the more the clinks in my brain were trying to figure out everything so I needed to finish it to find out. It really is an awesome book to read. Full of suspense, mystery, a little loving but more importantly self-discovery or a self-realization about Kenzie’s life from when she was a little girl to her life in the present.
Definitely give this book a read, you will not be disappointed!
Z. Elizabeth 