Our story follows Gage Chandler, a small-time true crime novelist who's moving into the infamous Devil House. Devil House has lived many lives: A small dinette, a porn store, a crime scene. Gage is taking up residency due to the latter, a bizarre double-murder most likely committed by one of three teens in the 80's. While Chandler is more than excited to dive into the research so he can receive his big break, some of the pieces aren't fitting. Things aren't adding up. Intertwining past and present, Chandler has some heavy information to sift through before his novel is complete--if only he can piece this puzzle together.

OKOK A FEW SPOILERY THINGS BUT NOT ACTUAL SPOILERS....LIKE IF UR A GOOD GUESSER MAYBE SKIP MY REVIEW SRRY :/

I feel it should be a law that if a cover looks ominous and spooky that the book has to match that vibe. Unfortunately, Devil House did not :-(. This novel doesn't conform to one genre: multiple themes are explored that make the read feel more like a work of non-fiction rather than a story about fictional murders. The writing is flowery and very much overkill the majority of the time. I often felt like the book was being narrated by a pretentious college professor, especially during portions where the teens were interacting with one another. It felt very strange, like the writing style and the plot weren't matching up. Along with this, I felt that the ending was cheap and unnecessary. I'm assuming that the point was to have readers think more critically about true crime and true crime media. These creators profit off of people's pain, which was outlined beautifully in the letter from Jesse's mom but, the ACTUAL ending made me almost want to cackle. While it's extremely important that true crime content creators are scrutinized, I feel the situation he created was highly unrealistic, if someone wanting to be taken seriously in a true crime community pulled what Gage did they would simply be shunned and shamed. This reminded me of when Crime Junkie Podcast plagiarized work; they were called out for it mercilessly (rightfully). Is it ambitious? Yes! Is it evident it was extremely well crafted? Yes! Is it enjoyable? Eh. I was looking for something frightening and this is not. I would recommend if you're looking for a philosophical-eqsue work about true crime/true crime fiction but, not if you're a horror reader like myself.