These Familiar Walls

Dotson (The Cut) keeps the twists coming in this ambitious but not entirely believable haunted house story. The narrative toggles back and forth in time between 1998, when Amber Walker endures teen turmoil with her scolding mother and father, and 2020, when adult Amber; her husband, Ben; and school-age children Xander and Marigold have newly moved into her parents’ old homestead in northern Ohio. By then the house has a grim reputation—her parents were murdered there by masked intruders only a few months before the move—and shortly after settling in, Amber and Ben begin seeing strange reflections in its mirrors and hearing disembodied voices in its vacant rooms. As Amber struggles to cope with the weird influence that appears to be manifesting in their home, troubling aspects of her past come to light—including her contentious relationship with her younger sister, Hannah, who died in a mysterious fire years earlier, and her fraught teen friendship with juvenile delinquent Nathan Teldegardo—that cast suspicion on her motives. Dotson propels her tale to a pyrotechnic finale replete with shocking revelations that stretch credibility even as they make sense of the mystery. Readers able to set aside their skepticism will be pleased. (Apr.)