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Title: too moody for its own good
Review: Peter Straub is often referred to as one of the top horror writers this side of SK, so I was certainly expecting more than this breakfast biscuit of a ghost story. A teenage boy has disappeared in a house with a dastardly history. His uncle comes for the funeral of his sister in law, the boys mother who has killed herself, and begins a search. Straub manages to encompass ghosts, pedophilia, serial killers, a haunted house, creepy visions, and a gratuitous Magnetic Fields reference. This book isnt very scary at all and the characters are too shallow to register with us emotionally. Mark, the boy, is a cluster of teen cliches. Finally Mark is living happily with Patrick Swayze in some happy otherworld, so everythings OK! Much too New Agey, and very repepitive due to shifting points of view...
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