I'm writing this on my phone en route to my holiday so apologies for brevity (I love how I write this as though there are people reading....)

John Boyne's This House is Haunted is a quick and easy read. This really should have been one of the novels I blogged about whilst halfway through, giving my theories on what was going to happen, as I was almost bang on. But then, I guess that's the point. It's a predictable Victorian style ghost story. Not nearly as creepy as MR James or even Dickens, but a reliable chugging along haunted house story. Frustrations are born from the fact that the heroine (21 year old Eliza Caine) is always about a chapter behind the reader - like who the malevolent ghost is, who her spectral protector is... Really?! and there's the usual urge to slap the reticent villagers around the face and tell them to stop being so sodding Victorian, but then they are Victorian I suppose.

Once again, there is the annoyance that nobody seems to get a happy ending in any of the books I read any more, but again, this being a ghost story homage (for can it be a ghost story in its own right if Boyne has simply made a list of what happens in all great ghost stories and then ticked off the situations and plot points one by one?) you must expect it's going to end like all good ghost stories - in that the protagonist can never truly escape.

In summary, entertaining in parts, frustrating in more, over the top and open ended. It would make a great YA book or film but not creepy or unsettling enough for true greatness.

The best part is where you get that "hurr hurrr" moment of satisfaction where the book titled is mentioned in a conversation between two characters. Hurr hurrrr...

As it's holiday time I'm not after anything too taxing for the next few books (although there are a few older detective fiction ones in my case that have pretty small writing and archaic words) so I'm going for good old MC Beaton's second in the Agatha Raisin series - The Vicious Vet.