There's Someone Inside Your House: A Bloody Cute Romance
- K.
- Feb 7, 2020
- 3 min read
It took me a moment, but I’ve finally done it! I’ve completed Stephanie Perkins’ There’s Someone Inside Your House
! Funnily enough, I actually bought this book a couple years ago because I wanted to get into reading again. I saw it at the Barnes and Noble near my university and thought it was cool to see a teen slasher novel as a person with a then-budding interest in horror. Alas, after I bought it, it traveled from one college dorm, to another dorm, to my apartment, and now back to my house staring at me with its bright pink letters, unread, unloved. But! It finally happened. It took me about three months but it happened and TSIYH has been completed!
TSIYH is a teen slasher novel (déjà vu?) about a mixed-raced teenage girl named Makani who has moved from her home-state Hawaii to rural Nebraska. Unfortunately for her, right as she starts to settle into her Midwestern life in Osbourne, a particularly gruesome serial killer begins to terrorize the town. Makani, her friends, and cute scene boy/love-interest Ollie then struggle to maintain their normal lives, trying to keep safe while avoiding the targets on their own backs. Little do the others know, however, Makani has her own dark secret, the reason behind her big move from the beaches to the cornfields.
Like I said before, I’m a fan of horror, but I’m hard to scare. This book is not so much scary whereas it’s more gory, with some pretty intense descriptions of body mutilation that I applaud Perkins for thinking up. Yet, it’s not so realistic that the reader loses that campy, slasher-horror feel, or the idea that this book is okay for teenagers to read. The first murder ends with the killer drawing cartoon x’s over the victim’s eyes. With a knife, to be sure, but it’s still a darkly funny image, and that humor dots all the bloody moments throughout the novel. Definitely my favorite part.
Also of note is the heavy romance between Makani and Ollie. To be honest, you can probably separate the novel in two, given the chunks focused on these two seem so distant from the rest of the story. I wasn’t surprised to find out in my research that the author’s usual genre is romance, given the amount of focus placed on it. However, it wasn’t so disruptive that I was annoyed. It’s kind of an interesting play on genre tropes to have a sexually active couple as the heroes rather than the first to go. Ollie is also very sweet, teetering on the point of blandness, but I liked these two together. It was endearing to see them try to comfort each other and live their normal teenage-romance-filled lives despite their variety of secrets and fears. Cute.
I didn’t love everything, though. Not to repeat myself, but as a horror fan, I’m always looking forward to who the killer is as well as their motivation. This story is very character driven, so I was a bit disappointed when the killer was some random and not anyone with more significance. Their motivation also threw me for a loop, as I wasn’t sure how it fit in with the rest of the themes of the novel. Although, on that front I might just have to think about more. They’re also very inhuman for an otherwise realistic story, talking like a cartoon villain and doing Michael Myers-esque moves without the impact. Although I had fun with the murder scenes and the mystery, I’m not sure this is the villain a story like this deserves and wanted more.
All in all, I pretty much loved this book, and recommend it to anyone who likes teen slashers, particularly those in novel form. I enjoyed reading it, despite its flaws.
4 bloody knives out of 5.
Turns out this is actually being turned into a Netflix movie soon! Check it out once it’s released. 😊
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