Book Review: House by Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker

Jack and Stephanie are a married couple that got lost, and wound up on a backwoods road. The car's tires get slashed, so they are forced to stay at a hotel/house called The Wayward Inn. It becomes pretty apparent pretty quickly that something is not right with the house, nor with the hosts Pete, Stewart and Betty. Jack and Stephanie soon team up with a couple, Randy and Leslie, who are also forced to stay there with a similar predicament with their cars.  The behavior of their hosts become so disturbing that the four seemingly normal people start to turn on each other while fighting for their survival. They are caught up in a game of playing by the house's rules, and that in order to survive the four of them must choose one of themselves to die in order to live.

This book started off so similar to Ted Dekker's book Skin, that it took me about halfway through the book to get engaged in it. Then the differences between the two books became more apparent to me. Dekker and Peretti tend to use a lot of symbolism in this book, which became a more interesting read as I progressed towards the end of it. This book isn't for everyone, as there are some literally nauseating scenes in the book. However, if you do like a good horror story I would recommend this book more for the psychological reasons behind the horror than for the horror itself. Skin, I feel, was a better read and had more surprise twists and turns to it than House did, but I I would still recommend this book if this is the type of book a person likes to read.