Official Review: House Wayward by Mark Vuong

[KMAN76]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "House Wayward" by Mark Vuong.]

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House Wayward by Mark Vuong is a story that follows the lives of Charles, Rizz, Vicki, and Jake, four young writers who move into a mansion in what turns out to be a strange little town. They have all moved in together to provide a support group for each other and to review each other’s work. The neighborhood where they have moved into is collectively called Hill House, because of its location at the top of a large hill. The town is described as rundown with not many stores and not a lot of activity going on. As the group gets settled in their new home weird things begin to happen, strange sounds and visions plague the writers.

As the story continues more and more of each person’s personality comes alive. You see how Rizz’s and Charles personalities begin to change and get a sense of the problems that lay ahead. Vicki and Jake are by far the most normal of the four, and their romance provides the one bright spot in the story.

As the four characters visit places around the dingy little town, Vuong describes the thoughts of every person they come into contact with. The salesman who sells wood, the furniture salesman, and the woman who follows them around at the grocery store all seem to be a little off. Everyone in town seems to be a little unbalanced.

I kept waiting for something, anything to happen. I wanted something to happen. Finally in the last few pages of the book everything reaches a boiling point, but it seems to take forever to get there. There are places in the book that the author gets very wordy with descriptions, and you find out way too much information about people who just don’t really matter. I understand that the author was trying to describe the strangeness of the town by telling us all of the secondary character’s thoughts but is just gets to be too much.

I give this book two out of four stars. I really did not enjoy reading this book. It seemed like it was never going to end. It starts out good and you do get invested in the four main characters but it just does not move fast enough. I think the book would have been better if it had been written in half the number of pages.

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