Hooked on Books

The Apartment is about a couple- Mark & Steph, who live in South Africa, and have been struggling to recover and get their lives back on track after they were the victims of a home invasion. In an attempt to get away from their home which they don't feel comfortable in now, they sign up with a house swap agency and head to Paris. When they arrive, the house is not as advertised- it's a complete dump and abandoned with the exception of one eccentric old lady; and the couple who was suppose to stay in their house is a no-show...

First of all, I think this story started off all wrong. It presented a traumatized couple having major issues recovering from an "attack" but it doesn't give you any details "upfront" on this supposed attack so I couldn't empathize at all with what they were going through because I wasn't clued in. When the authors (Sarah Lotz & Louis Greenberg a.k.a. S.L. Grey) finally did explain the home invasion there was absolutely no suspense or horrific actions on the part of the intruders so I still didn't feel any empathy toward Mark & Steph- if anything I felt like their behavior was somewhat irrational bordering on nuts. Especially when in the midst of the invasion, Steph tells the intruders not to hurt their little girl- Hayden, so the intruders look in Hayden's room and see her sleeping so they shut the door so they don't wake her. Does that sound like an evil intruder set on harming someone to you? To me, it makes them come across as the least scariest bad guys ever which negates this couple's horrific experience even more. I think the story would have been better if it immediately opened with an intense and "realistic" home invasion -in progress, so we readers are cued in from the very beginning about what's causing this couples extreme fear and obsessive behavior.

Mark & Steph's behavior then turns even more unbelievable when they arrive at this dump in Paris and don't see anything wrong with the situation so they just continue their stay in this awful apartment. Who does that??

After that the story just goes even further downhill from there. The major problem being, that there were way too many threads opened up but none of them were fully fleshed out or tied together properly. To name a few...1) We have the most mediocre "home invasion" ever 2) along with the nicest "bad guys" I've ever seen 3) the elusive safe the intruders were looking for which we never heard anymore about 4) The crazy old lady living in the dump in Paris 5) which also turns out to be- the 'haunted' dump in Paris 6) the mysterious house-swap couple that we never learn anything about 7) Mark's deceased daughter, Zoe's, malevolent ghost 8) the unhinging of Mark 9) the hair aka lifeblood  in Paris & South Africa (don't even ask- lol). I could go on & on but you get my gist.

The book is touted as a psychological horror story but I honestly got the feeling that the authors couldn't come to an agreement on what kind of story they wanted to write, so they just threw in a little of bit of everything and a lot of nothing! If you were planning to read this one, I would save yourself the time and find something else.

*I received this ARC from Edelweiss & Blumhouse Books in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

**I read this for my 2016 Halloween Bingo: ~Genre: Horror~ square