CarlAlves

In The Home, Freeman Mills is a twelve-year-old rebellious type who has gone through various homes until he reaches Wendover, a home for troubled children. After having gone through traumatic experiences as a child, his plan is to lay low, a task that isn’t so easy for someone with the ability to read minds, and as he soon learns, to see ghosts. Wendover is really a front for bizarre experimentation being funded by some shadowy government agency, that never got explained very well in the novel and had a bit of a cliché feel to it. At Wendover, they bring the children to a state of death briefly before bringing them back. This experimentation unleashes many of the ghosts at the site that once used to be a mental institution.

The Home was an enjoyable novel. There was a great deal of suspense and intrigue as the devious nature of Wendover and the people who ran it were slowly unveiled. There was also the specter of what had happened to Freeman as a child, which ties into what was currently happening, that I also found intriguing. The setting of the story worked well to set up the mood and atmosphere. There were a few things that happened in the later part of the novel that I found a bit confusing and not well-explained, but the ending itself was satisfying. This was a good horror story that I would recommend.

Carl Alves - author of Blood Street