“Killer House Party” Is a Bash You’ll Want to Leave Early

Henry Holt and Co.

Spooky season is upon us, and there’s nothing quite like a good horror novel to go with your pumpkin spice and Halloween movies. Lily Anderson’s new YA novel, Killer House Party, sounded like it could be the perfect addition to that lineup when I first read the premise: a horror comedy about a graduation party held at a haunted house where the ghosts are anything but friendly. Maybe not the most original story in theory, but I hoped it would surprise me and subvert my expectations. And it definitely did, but not in a good way.

Killer House Party is the story of high school senior Arden, valedictorian of her class and planning to attend her dream college with the goal of becoming a doctor. There’s just one small problem: Her parents have bought the Deinhart manor, a century-old boarded-up house that’s supposedly haunted, to renovate and sell—and they’ve drained Arden’s college fund to pay for it. Already caught between her parents’ volatile divorce and desperate to keep them from ruining her future, Arden and her friends plan a graduation party at the manor, charging an attendance fee for the promise of seeing the inside of a house that’s been at the center of rumors and ghost stories for years. Arden and her friends soon learn those stories may have a bit of truth to them when the house’s ceilings begin to bleed and its walls produce hands that pull people into an endless void. The night quickly turns into a fight for survival when it becomes clear the house isn’t willing to let anyone leave alive.

The horror aspect of the novel is more mildly creepy than anything, but Anderson makes the Deinhart family and their manor intriguing enough that I wanted to know the truth behind what happened to them. There are at least five or six different accounts of how the family supposedly met their demise, each one more fantastical and sensationalized than the last, and these inspire the hauntings the partygoers have to contend with. The most horrifying of these to me wasn’t a bloody one in a traditional sense—instead it was something that brought to mind the citizens of Westview from Marvel’s WandaVision, stuck in a painful loop they have no hope of breaking free from.

The story is told from Arden’s first-person perspective, which in theory isn’t a bad choice. The problem is the majority of the book takes place on the day of Arden’s high school graduation, meaning backstory and exposition are relayed to the reader through her internal narration. Info-dumping is nearly impossible to avoid completely in most novels, but needing to rely so heavily on it in order for the reader to understand Arden’s friendship group dynamic and her relationships with other characters gets to be way too much, especially when interactions themselves are unable to stand on their own without Arden needing to chime in to clarify something. Everyone comes off as little more than one-dimensional, with barely any personality outside of banter that falls flat more often than it lands. As a result, it’s difficult to care about the safety of characters who barely resemble relatable human beings.

Another reason the info dumps weaken the story is because they grind the plot to a halt and often feel like superfluous tangents that don’t need to exist to get the point across. The best example of this is when Arden and her ex-boyfriend Nathaniel are in the manor’s nursery and she’s studying a rocking chair, noticing that it’s similar to one she had as a child and lamenting that her parents got rid of it when dividing up furniture during divorce proceedings. This is clearly meant to be a character-building moment for Arden, communicating how difficult her parents’ divorce has been on her and how they haven’t taken her feelings into consideration on anything, but that’s has already been made clear to the reader at this point in the story—the entire plot of the book is set into motion because of Arden’s parents only thinking of themselves and betraying her trust. If this would have been set up as a conversation with Nathaniel, maybe a way for him and Arden to move past the awkward tension that’s still between them at this point in the story, it could have worked better, but having it present solely for the audience’s sake is unnecessary.

Arden herself is a character who’s difficult for me to pinpoint simply because there isn’t much too her—she even says her entire personality is just being smart, and school is the only thing she’s good at. She’s clearly set up this way to learn that she can be more than that, but I never really felt that she changed all that much. I’m not exaggerating when I say the character interactions consist mainly of quips and forced comedy, even in the direst situations, and there’s no room for actual character development to shine through for anyone, especially Arden. She becomes a little more willing to be flexible about making plans for the future, but that’s really the only change that happens, and it doesn’t feel earned when there’s no buildup and one conversation is seemingly all it takes to change her attitude.

Without spoiling too much, the book doesn’t end so much as it stops. Although there are a couple of satisfying parts of the way things wrap up, there’s no closure to the central conflict between Arden and her parents. This perfectly describes reading Killer House Party as a whole: It may not be the worst decision, but it’s ultimately disappointing.

Killer House Party is out now.