First of all, I just want to say that the title of this book is very clever. One of those where you get to a certain point in the book and you say, "Ahh you sly fox I see what you did there." and it ups your enjoyment of the book immensely. So really like two of those stars are simply there because of the cleverness of the title in relation to the content of the book. The rest are because it's a ghost story wrapped up in a murder mystery wrapped up in a giant hug.
Leigh Harker lives alone, just as she likes it in her giant home; made for a family of far more than one. Estranged from her sister she lives a solitary existence of routine, heading to work at the same time every day and returning home at the same time to sit down to her TV dinner, a cup of tea, and her one hobby of quilt making. She's lived in her home for fifteen years, has always felt she was at home there but that suddenly changes one night when the "Intruder" appears. The Intruder is the very thing nightmares are made of; long-dead gray hair, gnarled hands, white dead eyes, and a mouth full of terrifying teeth it makes the climb up Leigh's stairs every night to her bedroom door where it harasses her, forcing her to finally take refuge in her living room. After days of this Leigh has had enough and she decides that she and the Intruder are going to have a stand-off. Leigh's life is never the same afterward.
Coates's take on what a "haunting" is was original, even as you start to understand that not all is what it seems in Leigh's home it's still a complete shock when you realize what has been going on. There are just enough red herrings thrown out to keep the book moving forward without losing any of the spooky atmospheres that center around the house that the two main characters love dearly.
A big drawback for me to a lot of ghost stories is there is at least one time where I am screaming at the protagonist that they are doing something incredibly stupid and that does happen a lot at the beginning of the book and Coates manages to turn that on its head when the explanation as to why Leigh does or does not do something comes about. It's really quite brilliant actually.
For me, though it's the Happy Ending (as with most of my books). I've found that the few of Coates's books that I have read (I plan on reading more I just never seem to get around to it) are somehow terrifying but still manage to be incredibly sweet and heartwarming. A few years ago I stumbled across a book of Victorian Ghost Stories written by Women (I swear that's the actual title or pretty damn close), there were terrifying yes, but they all had some sort of heartwarming endearment to them in the end. The dead soldier who terrifies the neighborhood who was just coming home to apologize to his father, a mother who died but had something to tell her daughter. Stuff like that. Coates's books (the ones I have read) seem to very much be in the same vein. There is more to them than just trying to scare you into never sleeping again.
I would highly recommend it to anyone that loves a good ghost story or even a murder mystery because that's what it truly is at its heart. Sure yeah, there's ghosts and a terrifying house that may or may not be evil but really that's just window dressing to a murder mystery with an ending that even though I picked out who the killer was as soon as they were presented I could not for the life of me figure out how the hell Coates was going to make it work. Blew my freaking mind because it was such a simple explanation and yet I never even thought of it.
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