DNF @ 25%. This is just not doing it for me right now.

There is much to say about this novel, for the good and the bad.
Interesting story, a bit clumsily developed, with pointless circonvolutions (what is the insistence on Merry's use of signs in one of the final chapters for?? It does not add anything...) and an "ambiguous" final twist that left me totally, jaw-dropping disappointed. It's a pity, because there is some gold in the novel, nearly always betrayed in the realisation. For example, the treatment of the unreliable narrator as potentially disturbed adult recalling her eight-year-old self's memories is fairly good for a while, until the writer seems forgetting about the double layer of treacherous memories and plunges into a child's narrative. A good one, ok, but it's not what we traded in for, when we suspended incredulity about the adult character recalling her (slippery) past. The final chapters are terrifying, except that, as I anticipated, the very last lines wreck it all with a Dr Caligari trick (see the final scene of the movie, but beware, this is a half-spoiler). I can't recall any moment in the narrative that prepared this plot twist, unless we accept that the unreliable one is not the narrator, but the writer! And we WILL NOT accept it, will we?
Much to the writer's honour, there is some great insight about the shifty nature of mental illness, the misoginist violence in-built into normalisation rituals and catholic symbolism, and the cultural and psychological vacuum and desperation in which reality TV, or trash TV in general, find their way into people's lives. I did not have to push my suspension of disbelief too far to believe that this "normal" family with an unoccupied father on the verge of dropping into religious mania had ended up acting in a monstrous exorcism reality show, in order to survive economically their elder daughter's psychiatric care. Well done.
It's a pity that many interesting reflections were delivered pedantically through the means of a nauseating horror-zine blog commenting on the now-vintage reality show. It was supposed to leave us with the doubt that all the experience was a fake, I suppose. I do suppose, because the blog chapters totally failed at whatever they were aimed, unless they were precisely aimed at annoying the reader. Maybe part of this disgust, I have to admit, is due to the audiobook reader's treatment of the blog chapters.
Which brings me to the review of the audiobook quality: folks, don't do that to yourselves. The narrator spoiled the book for me. She even read male voices with, oh boy, fake male voices. The protagonist's father sounds as a mix of Homer Simpson and Goofy. 1 star to the audiobook.
All in all, a flawed book worth reading, as many I encountered lately.
Just stay away from the audiobook read by Joy Osmansky. ( )

I’ve read his narcoleptic detective books and enjoyed them but this was a cut above. Does exactly what the best horror books do, by exposing some of the darkness in the real world, while at the same time it was full of little Easter eggs for devoted horror fans. Well done… and more than a bit disturbing ( )

Wow. Gonna be hard to get a few of these scenes out of my head. Don't give up when you start thinking it's overcooked with all the classic horror references, it all kind of makes sense eventually. Good scary read. ( )

I can't recall how I came across this, but I'm glad I did. It's such a good take on the possession or mental illness trope of horror fiction. It's told from the point of view of the younger sister of the victim, about 15 years after the incident. What she remembers, and how it may have been affected by the family's participation in a TV show at the time is front and centre all the time. Did it really happen thus way or is she conflating the memory with something she's since read? It's definitely a page-turner and difficult to stick with in places,but so worth it when you get to the end. Highly recommended. ( )