The Apartment - S. L. Grey

I'm not much of a horror reader. I love love love horror movies, but horror books are difficult for me to get into. Maybe I have a terrible imagination? That being said, maybe take this review with a grain of salt. The premise of The Apartment is that a married couple going through some difficult times so they take a holiday to Paris, using a house share site (think airbnb but a swap situation). The trip goes nowhere near planned, the place is not what it is supposed to be, nor what it seems. Spooky stuff ensues. I guess. To me, there was so much extracurricular stuff going on that it was hard to even focus on the 'ghost story' portion of the book (which is what was supposed to be the focus, per the reviews and blurbs I had seen). There were past skeletons, mean in-laws, infidelity, random hot neighbors, a sickly daughter, marital problems, mistrust, and I am probably missing a few things.

There was an element of creepiness to parts of it, but it couldn't have been more than 10% of the book that I was genuinely thinking, "okay, I'm reading a horror story."

While I loved the final line of the book, the climax itself left me confused and frustrated. I have absolutely NO idea what happened. Maybe that is intentional, but to me it was so blurry that I literally have no idea and it wasn't even a good thinking piece of an open-ended climax.

2 stars.

read below to see my thoughts in real-time as I was reading. I keep a log of these to look back at my progression/thought process. Possible mild spoilers.

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42% - now the plot is getting somewhere. Up until now it's been Steph and Mark, the two main characters, bickering out of nowhere, not being honest with each other or facing their demons, and having the worst string of bad luck.

51% - and now for the first time in the book, I am slightly creeped out.

60% - damn, the authors just threw shade at two other authors saying Steph did not keep their books downstairs because they weren't good enough to be on display. Yikes. I hope this is an inside joke.

63% - now we're introducing a neighbor that Steph is flirting with? Touching on too many subjects here. Stick to attempting to scare me.

79% - wtf is going on?? I'm not the least bit scared, but I am very confused.

98% - this is the ending? I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT HAPPENED THOUGH

100% - solid last line.