To Read, Perchance to Dream: Book Review: Darkhouse (Experiment in Terror #1) by Karina Halle

There’s always been something a bit off about Perry Palomino. Though she’s been dealing with a quarter-life crisis and post-college syndrome like any other twenty-something, she’s still not what you would call “ordinary.” For one thing, there’s her past which she likes to pretend never happened, and then there’s the fact that she sees ghosts. Luckily for her, that all comes in handy when she stumbles across Dex Foray, an eccentric producer for an upcoming webcast on ghost hunters. Even though the show’s budget is non-existent and Dex himself is a maddening enigma, Perry is instantly drawn into a world that both threatens her life and seduces her with a sense of importance. Her uncle’s haunted lighthouse provides the perfect catalyst and backdrop for a mystery that unravels the threads of Perry’s fragile sanity and causes her to fall for a man, who, like the most dangerous of ghosts, may not be all that he seems.

Darkhouse is an entertaining ghost story. It has everything a good spooky novel needs: an old lighthouse, a ghost legend, a spunky heroine, and an inscrutable hero. This is Karina Halle's debut novel and it's obvious she's talented with the scary!

As other reviewers have noted, the beginning is a little slow, but it's not super hard to get through. And with the promise of a lighthouse (which I love) coming, I kept going. It wasn't long before I was caught up in the story, wondering who Dex really was, worried the ghost would jump out and scare Perry and me.

Perry was my kind of heroine. She wasn't perfect, had issues from her past she was working on, she was still dealing with self-esteem issues, but she didn't let that stop her. I really appreciated that the author didn't get carried away and over-emphasize the self-esteem and other issues. Some authors tend to dwell on them too much to the detriment of the story.

Dex, being on the enigmatic side, felt a little two-dimensional to me. I wanted to know more about him, but since it was a first person narrative, the reader can only know what the protagonist knows.

This book was a fun read and I look forward to the next novels in the series. I will be reviewing the next one, Red Fox, in a few weeks.

*Disclaimer: I received this book for review from the author. I was not required to write a positive review.