Anne Rivers Siddons (1936–2019)

Thayer Wentworth was always a child of privilege. After the death of her father, things at home get worse for her as her mother grows ever more poisonous. Sheltered most of her life, everything changes for Thayer the year she serves as a counselor at her old summer camp. She meets a boy there and gets pregnant. After the abortion, and the complete destruction of her dreams, she must start over.

In college she finds that love again in the form of an Irish college professor who seems as wild show more and wonderful as the poems he teaches. Thayer begins to believe in magic once again. But she soon finds herself on a dark path that she could never have predicted.

OMG WTF

This book is frankly baffling. It has a massive identity crisis right in the middle. The first half is about Thayer's coming of age. She learns about sex, love, consequences, heartbreak, how to deal with a hellacious mother, and how to build a life for oneself against all odds.

Then all of a sudden, things get really really weird. It starts when Thayer's best friend wants to get her misbehaving kids into an exclusive summer camp that's known for reforming troubled boys. Thayer's husband, Aengus, has been helping out up there, so he gets her a meeting with the camp owner. The camp owner then EXTORTS SEX from the mother in exchange for her sons going to his camp. Everyone, is inexplicably fine with this. There seems to be an "oh well, harm's done" kind of attitude. If, as a mother, I'm desperate to get my kids into camp, and the camp owner propositions me for sex, I'm going to question just what sort of camp this is afterall. But absolutely no one does. Seriously, bizarre.

Then things get even crazier as Thayer's husband has some sort of psychotic break. He's Irish, and he teaches Irish folklore, and Thayer's grandmother was always warning Thayer not to let him get too "intense" with that whole Irish thing. I just assumed this was some sort of quaint Southern xenophobia, but no, apparently in the second half of the book, obscure Celtic religion is real?? Because at this exclusive camp, young boys are having their childhood sucked out in a dark pagan ritual. This somehow fuels the camp hierarchy in achieving immortality?? I mean, maybe? Thayer's husband has been a totally normal, loving person up to this point, but now he goes "full Irish" and is okay with drugging children and siphoning their youth out at night.

Thayer learns all of this like two days after meeting up with her old boyfriend from camp. So they do the rational thing and move away. She gets divorced from her newly psycho husband, takes her best friend's child who managed to escape from camp, and goes away. Hurrah! She finally got that child she always wanted! Seriously, I could not make this shit up.

Also, on an unrelated note, I hated Thayer's character. She serves no purpose in the novel that is purportedly about her life. She's incredibly passive. She cries ... literally like fifty different times throughout this novel. It became comical. Also when she gets upset, she reverts to infant status and begins screaming petulant demands at everyone. At one point, she curls up into a ball and starts screaming, "I want my mother!!" She is about twenty-eight. It was insufferable. show less

I’ve seen THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR on so many “Best of Horror” lists, and now I know why. It’s an enthralling blend of Southern gothic fiction and quiet horror. The creepy, slow-build kind that makes you question what’s really going on, something sinister or is your mind playing tricks?

This book was originally published in the 1970s and is set during that time. Colquitt and her husband Walter live in an upscale Atlanta neighborhood. There’s a lot of tennis at the club, parties with show more the neighbors, and day drinking for these folks. Don’t get me wrong! I liked Colquitt and Walter.

For many years an empty wooded “unbuildable” lot sat next to their house, and that’s how they liked it. Then one day, a talented young architect finds a way to build newlyweds their modern dream home on that lot. Neighbors don’t like it, but what can you do? They welcome the couple into the fold, then have to stand back helplessly while their dream home becomes a nightmare. And this happens over and over, tragedy finding each family that moves in.

“In the moonlight the ice-sheathed trees tossed and tinkled like great crystal hands fingering the sky, weaving and reweaving an incantation over the sweetly sleeping shape of the house next door.”

I greatly enjoyed the author’s haunting, beautiful writing and her flawed & memorable characters. I especially loved trying to figure out that malevolent house and its terrible influence on the occupants & neighbors. This is the first book by Siddons I’ve read, and I understand her other books are more contemporary Southern fiction — probably wonderful, but I so wish she had written more horror like THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR. show less

Anytime there's a story about a haunted house the history of that house is almost always to blame. Bad people lived there, bad events happened there, bad mojo festered there. So naturally the house, an innocent, was traumatized; it's haunted by those bad things.

But what if the house was brand spanking new and just not quite right. How would someone explain strange noises, freak accidents, and insidious behavior? Certainly the people were still to blame, right? It couldn't be that the house show more was born evil...

The House Next Door tells the tale of one such house from the perspective of the house's neighbors. It's not overly graphic nor is it shocking by today's standards, but it is true horror delivered by way of a slow burn. You know it's not going to end well yet you can't look away.

3 stars
(because the ending was not the end and the real ending bummed me out)

The house in The House Next Door brings out the worst in its inhabitants and visitors. Your deepest darkest desire manifests. Your worst nightmare comes true. You lose your inhibitions. All instinct, no conscience. But it seems the architect must have some responsibility since it's hinted at that his other designs were equally spellbinding. show less

When I first received the book, I thought "Oh no, it's so long" (358 pages). I really like to read shorter books. But as soon as I started reading I loved the characters and the descriptions of Edgewater made me feel as if I was there with them at the sea, smelling the food from the kitchen, feeling the excitement at being a child in the summertime. The only down side was I felt the book should have concentrated more on Lilly and Cam's life together, since there are missing years we know show more nothing about. I felt Lilly's pain at losing her loved one and loved that she talked to him and "heard" him talk to her. I've read mixed reviews about the ending, but if you read carefully and pay attention to what comes before, you might have an idea of what is coming. I did, and loved it from a readers point of view, but hated it for Lilly. This will definitely not be my last Anne Rivers Siddons book! show less