In a quest for a simpler life, Helen and Nate have abandoned the comforts of suburbia to take up residence on forty-four acres of rural land where they will begin the ultimate, aspirational do-it-yourself project: building the house of their dreams. When they discover that this beautiful property has a dark and violent past, Helen, a former history teacher, becomes consumed by the local legend of Hattie Breckenridge, a woman who lived and died there a century ago. With her passion for artifacts, Helen finds special materials to incorporate into the house–a beam from an old schoolroom, bricks from a mill, a mantel from a farmhouse–objects that draw her deeper into the story of Hattie and her descendants, three generations of Breckenridge women, each of whom died suspiciously. As the building project progresses, the house will become a place of menace and unfinished business: a new home, now haunted, that beckons its owners and their neighbors toward unimaginable danger.
Book Review Blog: The Invited
A ghost story taking place in the Northeastern part of the United States, Vermont, to be more specific – a staple for Jenniffer McMahon, at least in this, the second of her books that I have read. The first book, The Winter People, made me an instant fan of her work and I was keen on picking up another one of her novels. It really didn’t matter which one but I was looking for something in the same, or similar, vein of The Winter People. The Invited seemed to fit the bill.
Helen and Nate, a happily married couple, leave their urban life in Connecticut to be more in tune with nature and uproot and leave for rural Vermont. There, they purchase a plot of land near a bog with a morbid history attached to it – a history that the townsfolk are ashamed to talk about because it involves the persecution of a woman who was an alleged witch. Along with this seedy past, there are rumors of a hidden treasure that the supposed witch took to her grave. The couple plans to build their dream home on the plot of land and begin to gather materials and remnants with a shoddy past to incorporate into their new home. Nate starts to see a white deer in the nearby bog that seems to be calling to him but has a hard time capturing it with his camera. A nearby neighbor has a story attached to her mom and family that is the talk of the town, and not in a good way. There is a mystery looming and Helen, a history teacher in Connecticut, is hellbent on gathering all the information she can muster on land and the supposed witch with the hopes of solving the puzzle.
Again, McMahon intertwines the past and present to move the story forward, unraveling clues and hints along the way to keep you guessing with each turn of the page. If I had to compare this story to anything, it would have to be a very long episode of Scooby-Doo where there are red herrings galore and the final revelation can be a shocker to some. This is not to say that The Invited plays out as a naive narrative or YA (young adult), far from it.
That was the good. With regard to the not-so-good, there are quite a few tropes in The Invited that were not, well, inviting. Without spoiling the story, there were more than a few times that had me slapping my forehead and asking, really? The first few times were forgivable because if I was told that said land was haunted because of its morbid history, I would scoff and brush it off. My wife, however, is another story. Still, if I started to experience things that manifest a haunting I would take another look and question what, if anything, I would be bringing into my potential new home. What’s worse, when my life is being threatened by people, not ghosts, I’d say it’s time to go, especially when law enforcement makes nothing of the threats. That is a big no-no. Then, there was the Scooby-Doo motif mentioned above. If you have seen enough movies, and read enough books, then you will be able to read between the lines and figure out what’s happening before the conclusion.
To summarize, while I enjoyed The Invited, it is not without its flaws. I think that it works better as a mystery as opposed to a ghost story. Still, this is, in my opinion, another great entry from McMahon as she continues to impress me with her writing and her storytelling that is both captivating and enthralling. Jennifer McMahon, again, has reeled me in with her writing and another one of her novels is on its way to me for my reading pleasure, Burntown. Give The Invited a read and while I did not find it to be scary, there are certainly moments that will make the hairs on the back of your neck rise.