The Dead House
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Welcome to the Dead House. Three students: dead. Carly Johnson: vanished without a trace. Two decades have passed since an inferno swept through Elmbridge High, claiming the lives of three teenagers and causing one student, Carly Johnson, to disappear. The main suspect: Kaitlyn, "the girl of nowhere." Kaitlyn's diary, discovered in the ruins of Elmbridge High, reveals the thoughts of a disturbed mind. Its charred pages tell a sinister version of events that took place that tragic night, and the girl of nowhere is caught in the center of it all. But many claim Kaitlyn doesn't exist, and in a way, she doesn't - because she is the alter ego of Carly Johnson. Carly gets the day. Kaitlyn has the night. It's during the night that a mystery surrounding the Dead House unravels and a dark, twisted magic ruins the lives of each student that dares touch it. Debut author Dawn Kurtagich masterfully weaves together a thrilling and terrifying story using psychiatric reports, witness testimonials, video footage, and the discovered diary – and as the mystery grows, the horrifying truth about what happened that night unfolds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Told through a retrospective collection of found evidence surrounding the deaths of several students in a boarding school fire, Kurtagich's debut novel is deeply disturbing and fraught with emotion. Carly and Kaitlyn Johnson are two separate personalities sharing the same body and have done so for as long as either can remember. After the death of their parents, Carly and Kaitlyn's time is split between treatment in a psychiatric hospital and studying at a British boarding school; it's at school where their comfortable dissociative routine begins to unravel under mysterious and arcane circumstances. Their slowly expanding group of friends houses a traitor, and Kaitlyn is left to search for Carly after her alter ego's persona disappears. Psychological self-indulgence wars with fascinating introspection as diary entries and transcripts of video footage and therapy sessions chronicle a teenager's descent into and out of madness. Contrived tension and a haphazard time line ring a few discordant notes, but are balanced by insightful characterization and a detailed exploration of the importance of the emergent identity to the teenage self. Ages 15 up.
