From award-winning author Elizabeth Hand comes the first-ever novel authorized to return to the world of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House—a "scary and beautifully written" (Neil Gaiman) new story of isolation and longing perfect for ...

We think that the gimmick of A Haunting on the Hill is that Hand has the unique opportunity to continue the story of the famous Hill House, and perhaps if you're more familiar with the original, there are references that make this novel sing, but we at NUBClub did not know them and we were not fans of this story. The premise was a decent start -- a playwright recruits a number of people to stay in a creepy house to work on a new witch-y musical that will launch their nascent or resurrect their aborted careers, but the house is haunted and things go bad. You can see the story that would work here. The problem is that Hand doesn't find it. Instead, Hand tries very, VERY hard to make sure we know we are in a horror story. Basically every chapter of the book ends with some pregnant foreshadowing: an oversized black hare that smiles, a glimpse of someone dead years ago, a door that wasn't in a room before. But it's all just random things that are happening to different characters; none of it actually seems to be adding up into anything. On top of that, basically every character in town who isn't the hapless house guests is telling them once a conversation that the house is evil and they should leave. Is constantly telling us the house is haunted supposed to be scary? Are novels supposed to do some showing? What makes this all the more frustrating is that in terms of actual plot just about nothing happens until the very end of the book. All the characters have their creepy moments and dark secrets and brewing animosities towards the rest of the team, but all they end up doing is rehearsing the play and wandering around the house until the finale, when the axe falls on one of the characters seemingly at random and that's the end. It's so much clumsy build-up and then the resolution just seems like the author rolled a die to decide a victim and gave up. It's almost impressive how much track laying there is in the novel just to have none of it add up in any way. There's not much more to say about this one. It's just a poor attempt to scare you by saying boo over and over again without any other substance or meaning. We do hope the original Hill House was a little more thought-out, and scary, than that.