Throwback Thursday: Hide and Seek by Jack Ketchum

 

Author: Jack Ketchum
First published in 1984 by Ballantine Books

Hide and Seek is a book about games. Reckless, dangerous games. Games you might even want to play yourself if you're with the right people. But shouldn't. Not ever. In a small Maine town, a group of thrill seeking college kids finds a game of hide and seek in an abandoned house turning into a reality of stark terror.

Hide and Seek is another random audio pick that became available on my library's Overdrive site.  From the synopsis, I was expecting a really creepy haunted house story.  What I got was something very different. 

I have to say that I was a bit underwhelmed by the book.  The kids don't even enter the house until the last third of the book.  I'm not even sure what the point of the first two-thirds of that book were.  The narrator, Dan, talks about how he met the kids he goes into the house with and his weird, rocky relationship with  Casey.  Casey has some very large issues.  I thought that her creepy back story was leading somewhere to affect the happenings in the house, but really, it was just boring background.  The action takes pace over the last chapter and was kind of a let down.

I wouldn't recommend this one to anyone expecting a haunted house story.  You won't get it here.  Keeping that in mind, you may like it.  Give it a shot and see for yourself.  It just wasn't for me.