Through the Midnight Door

A spooky house visited with a door for each of the Finch sisters holding secrets that color the rest of their lives leaving Meg unable to be reliable, Esther paranoid to the point of actually almost shooting her son, and Claire, driven to the edge and ending in suicide in that mysterious house. And there is the mysterious boy, Donny who showed them the house. With that kind of start, this book was full of slow creep with flashbacks to what happened when the girls were young and the present where Meg and Esther are trying to find out why Claire took her life and figure out all the truth before they end up dead themselves. However, while I enjoyed the hauntings of Claire (or something that looks like her) with Meg and the unraveling of Esther, I did not much like some of the flashbacks. This family was broken before even their first visit to the house with lies and secrets and a buried tragedy. Claire's story was so tragic because she did not know at first what had happened when she was little and then she piles on the burden, thinking it is her fault for letting the darkness into her family. So much could have been avoided if only her sisters had really talked with her. And I hated what their mother did. It was inexcusable and so very wrong and everyone just lets it slide because their mother was grieving and had dark spells?! That kind of behavior made it harder to read this book as I went on. But I did finish even though I guessed who and why. I do feel the house was well done with creepiness and the shadow plus what it gave in return for the bits it took. So, this had good points for a creepy horror but also stupid bits like age inconsistencies for certain actions that were not believable. It could have been great but only reached pretty good.