Score: 3.5/5
“Devil House” is a true crime/horror novel written by American singer and author John Darnielle and published on Jan. 25th, 2022. The readers follow Gage Chandler, a journalist and true crime author chasing his next big novel by uncovering the truth at a house where two people were murdered by teens in Milpitas, California.
The strongest appeal of “Devil House” is its ability to make the reader question the difference between fiction and reality. Chandler does this by constantly referencing real-life events, such as Anthony Jacques Broussard’s murder of Marcy Renee Conrad in Milpitas. He also crafts a narrative where the reader can’t tell true information from the fake, like when Chandler describes how troubled teenagers fantasize about an imaginary castle or when Darnielle starts mixing up his previous imaginary book’s murder with the murders that happened within the house. The book’s illusions of what is real or fake make for better immersion within the book, as the reader tries to piece together the true story about the murders.
Since “Devil House” is also set in Milpitas, it makes the story more engaging for Milpitas residents because you can recognize some of the things mentioned in the book, like how Chandler’s house is on Main Street. Some of the events that take place in the book are also from 1970’s Milpitas, so readers can learn parts of Milpitas’s culture from then, as Darnielle lived in Milpitas around this time and recounts folktales and mythical occurrences. However, the book is still mainly fictional, so some of these folktales aren’t actually true.
However, some aspects I didn’t like about the book are that it is a particularly slow-burn book that takes its time to set up plot threads, and it constantly switches perspectives to confusing different time periods and locations. Switching perspectives with locations and time periods isn’t necessarily bad, but I felt that at times Chandler used it excessively, like when he switched into a random folk tale that only really showed symbolism while detracting from the current plot in the book.
Also, the book is not easy to understand, with many motifs such as a new alphabet and symbolism with changing fonts for different sections, so if you aren’t prepared to analyze a lot of the book’s parts to understand all of the overtones fully, this may not be the book for you.
Overall, “Devil House” is a well-crafted book with a lot of parts that the reader has to figure out, which is both its largest strength as a book and a reason why some may not want to read it.