Darkhouse by Karina Halle: a Book Review

Darkhouse by Karina Halle (Experiment in Terror #1)
Publisher:  Metal Blonde Books
Publication Date:  May 1st 2011
ISBN:  1461079853
Genre: Paranormal

Book Synopsis:  With all the vampire, werewolf and faerie books out there, it's easy to become numb to all things supernatural. The antidote? Darkhouse introduces two real and unforgettable characters, Perry Palomino & Dex Foray, amateur ghost hunters who are "attractive, relatable and oddly heroic," "flawed but loveable," "slightly crazy" and just the most endearing pair to ever tackle the paranormal...just don't call them normal. Darkhouse is a thrilling and sexy new take on concepts like Supernatural and The X-Files, bringing a breath of fresh air to a genre that has been inundated with the dead.

My Thoughts on Darkhouse:   Wow!  What an amazing tale!  I was not sure what I was getting into when I started this book - the cover, with the title was quite captivating.  I was so pleasantly amazed at what I found inside.  


As the synopsis states, this is not your typical supernatural tale.  Darkhouse is a very real, very believable story of a young woman who was drawn to and decided to check out a supposedly haunted lighthouse on her uncles property.  Boy, she didn't know what she was getting into.  


I am a big fan of such shows as Ghost Hunters and The X-Files.  This does put you somewhat in mind of those shows.  However, Karina Halle's writing style makes it so much better.  She hooked me from the beginning, and it was most definitely a page-turner!!  It is a book that kept me thinking about it, even when I was not reading it.  It drew me back constantly - even if it was just for a few pages - I took what I could get with the time I had available.


I loved that the protagonist of this tale, Perry,  is an average girl, someone you could relate to, not real popular; she has a less-than-perfect body, but she is her own person, and is not afraid of a challenge.  She meets and becomes sidekicks with Dex.  Perry's sister describes him as looking like the devil, while Perry says he looks sorta like Robert Downy, Jr.  I take that as being a little dark, but good looking.  He is ten years older than Perry, has seen the world, and seems like a great match for Perry.  


Halle wrote a tale that is scary in the way that it gets under your skin - it gets in your mind.  I love psychological thrillers.  I would characterize this in just that fashion.  


Anyway, you've just got to read this book!  Darkhouse is one of the best books I have experienced this year!!  I am very anxious to read Red Fox to see what happens next in the Experiment in Terror!!!

About the Author:  From the day she was born in Van­cou­ver, BC, Karina Halle always stood out from the crowd. Born with club feet, she spent the first six years of her life in casts on both legs. Though her dis­abil­ity pre­vented her from becom­ing a prima bal­le­rina, it did allow her imag­i­na­tion to flow freely as she cre­ated her own lit­tle worlds where noth­ing was impos­si­ble (unfor­tu­nately, those worlds tended to be on the macabre side – some things don’t change). Fast for­ward to age 18 when she decided to forgo the usual route by back­pack­ing by her­self around Aus­tralia and New Zealand and she really learned the value of being fear­less. That same ambi­tion piloted her through numer­ous trav­els, a bachelor’s degree in jour­nal­ism, var­i­ous cer­tifi­cates in film and writ­ing, a suc­cess­ful blog, her cur­rent work as a rock music jour­nal­ist and, of course, her devo­tion to the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror series. Karina cur­rently resides in Vancouver’s West End and can often be found with a bot­tle of wine, lis­ten­ing to her music a bit too loudly. 

About the series - Experiment in Terror (taken from The Experiment in Terror website):

A (very) mature young adult novel that is scary, sexy and relat­able, filled with the super­nat­ural and things that go bump in the night.


In a large, flaky nut­shell, the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series is an eight-part sci-fi/fantasy/horror series that revolves around a pair of ghost hunters. Well, aspir­ing ghost hunters, any­way. After film­ing a creepy expe­ri­ence in her uncle’s dilap­i­dated light­house, 22-year old Perry Palomino becomes a YouTube and inter­net star overnight. She attracts the atten­tion of Dex Foray, a pro­ducer and cam­era­man for a site that spe­cial­izes in var­i­ous webisodes, who con­vinces her to be a host for a low-budget ghost hunt­ing series. The only prob­lem is, nei­ther Perry or Dex are entirely “with it” — I mean, they see ghosts, after all. And when the duo isn’t wrestling with their very notion of real­ity, they’re grap­pling with a work­ing rela­tion­ship that’s deep-cut with sex­ual ten­sion. As the series moves on, lead­ing Perry and Dex to new locales and super­nat­ural sit­u­a­tions, their lives become more and more inter­twined, where they dis­cover that ghosts aren’t the only things that can haunt them.


Book #1 — Dark­house is avail­able now
Book #2 — Red Fox is avail­able now
Book #3 — Dead Sky Morn­ing is avail­able now
Book #4 — Lying Sea­son 
Book #2.5 — The Ben­son (An Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Novella)


Book #5 — On Demon Wings will be pub­lished May 13th, 2012
Add it to your Good Reads “To Be Read” list HERE.


GET YOUR TEAM EIT BUTTON HERE: