I obtained this e-book through my Kindle Unlimited Subscription.
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: September 12, 2024
Summary:
A widowed mother, ready to give love another chance, moves into her fiancé’s old family home with her teenage daughter. But as they try to build a future together, the past refuses to let go in this haunting short story from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger.
When Jules first meets the handsome artist Kirin, she’s still mourning her husband’s death, but a fairytale romance soon sweeps her off her feet. Now she and her daughter Scout are moving out of the city and into Kirin’s once-lonely mansion. He’s thoughtfully updated and adapted the home to match their personalities. But Scout is determined to keep her father’s memory alive by rejecting the new life her mother and Kirin have spun for her.
Scout’s sullenness begins to fade, though, when she finds a beautiful handmade doll in one of the many empty rooms in the house. Kirin says that the doll belonged to his late sister and he’d like Scout to have it. Scout’s hopeful for a connection over their shared grief, but as she grows more curious about Kirin’s sister, she can’t escape the feeling that a danger lurks in the house…and its gaze is fixed on her mother.
My thoughts:
This is the perfect book to start #spookyseason with and as I am going to try to fit in all the spooky reads I can during the month of October, having it be my first read of the month just seemed fitting! I’ve long been a fan of Lisa Unger, so grabbing this one was a no-brainer!
While I would have loved this to be a full-length novel, I do feel that Unger was able to give us a completely satisfying, twisted, creepy tale in this short story. The characters were just flushed out enough to get a feel for them and the setting was described just enough to be creeped out by it – I mean a house that seems to know your every move…no thank you!
As the title implies, this one does involve dolls, but I’m not going to get into that…I’ll let you see how the author works that in. All I’ll say is that it adds to the creepiness of the story and like Grady Hendrix did in How to Sell a Haunted House, I can guarantee you’ll never look at doll or puppet the same way again!
