Thank you NetGalley and Random House UK for the digital ARC!
This book, even tho I consider myself to be a major Jo Nesbo fan, I couldn't finish it no matter how hard I tried. It just wasn't for me.
It starts off strong right off the bat but that's not always good because things only get weirder and make no sense from the beginning which is also the reason I couldn't keep reading. Also, I couldn't get behind a horror story that resolves around kids it was too anticlimactic for me.

There's nothing I can say about the plot of this book that won't spoil it. But I will say instead that this book is FAN-TAS-TIC!! It will confuse and beguile the reader, keep you hooked and please persevere because it will all make sense and it is just brilliant. At times horrifyingly ridiculous, at others beautifully poignant, I can't think of any other book anything like this. Amazing, original and completely absorbing.

This was my first book by Jo Nesbo and I picked it up as I’m a fan of Stephen king. I loved it! Was absolutely hooked with it!

This Jo Nesbro novel was quite a surprise for me (not an unpleasant one). Having only ever read his Harry Hole detective fiction previously, I was expecting a dose of conventional Scandi Noir. I suppose, to be fair it is pretty noir, and given that Jo is Norwegian, it is also Scandi; it is, however, far from conventional.
I remained unsure for most of the novel if the genre were science fiction/fantasy/horror or if we had a case of the unreliable narrator, but whatever I settled on, I was undoubtedly gripped from the opening chapter, and found it hard to put the book down thereafter. With two (or more...) major twists to the plot, and - all important for me - a most satisfactory ending, this is an excellent book. Highly recommended if you can cope with the slightly weird!

I am a huge Jo Nesbo fan, particularly the Harry Hole series but others too such as The Kingdom. Therefore I was excited about getting access to this. Sadly I was quite disappointed by it. It read very much like a Young Adult book but I don't think they are the target audience. It won't put me off trying any of his new books but this one just really didn't engage me and I felt reading it was a bit of a chore which was surprising and disappointing.

What a mad little book! Shades of Stephen King and Joe Hill, with a hefty dose of Shirley Jackson thrown in, this is a fun romp about killers, bullies, ghosts, haunted houses, hungry phones, and much more. There's tongue firmly in cheek throughout, and it reads like the author is just having a good time flexing his muscles in yet another genre. Nothing new here, but certainly a great time. And a killer cover design.

As a fan of the Harry Hole novels, I really wanted to like this book. Unfortunately it's all over the place. The story flips on its head around the halfway mark and honestly it's difficult to keep track of what is going on, or to care one way or the other.
Tried forcing my way through this book twice, and ended up giving up at the 75% on the second attempted reading.
It's just too weird for my personal tastes, the characters arent particularly interesting or well drawn and the plot lurches all over the place. By the time I gave up on it, the whole thing had taken on a strange, almost dream-like quality to the narrative.
Not for me.

This book sadly wasn't for me, I found it a bit too hard going and the twists and turns frustrating not exciting, Disappointing as I di usually like the author but I suppose you can't please everyone.

Hmm, well, where to begin? This definitively is a book about which you can know too much before starting. Here we have a kid, a newcomer to a rural school after he got farmed out to foster parents, goading a classmate into making a prank phone call from an isolated phone box (ask your father) and seeing the machine swallow up and absorb the younger kid. Of course he's not believed – but it does lead to him getting quite close to the cool, aloof and attractive girl in school. Then something else happens, and as with the first one it's done in a kind of Spielberg/Joe Dante kind of way, and again it leads to a missing child and problems for our lad's rep. But between him and the cool girl and others he can triangulate the source of a lot of problems on an isolated "Night House" – but surely the evil there is just too much for one young teenager?

We then have a mahoosive switcheroo, which to some small extent was guessable. And I have to say why, without really stoking any embers sending spoilers up anyone's chimney. The thing is – is 'thing' there to hide from 'problem', 'issue' or something else, even I don't know – the thing is that the place was really off-kilter. It was an American town, with many Nordic names but many that weren't. I had to google things to see if it wasn't some lame Americanising translation that put the names that way.

All I can say is that the book kind of allows for a way to justify a lot of its oddity, but a lot that it doesn't. Some obvious wordplay is given a solution and a purpose, others not. The book proves quite nicely playful in taking people we thought we knew and presenting them in a very different scenario, as part of a full-on Twilight Zone (coloured, not the B/W) kind of bonkers-fest.

But I don't know. I thought the first section the most coherent, the most attractive to my reading tastes – and the way many have pointed out it's in a YA style probably says much about me. By the finish, when we are supposed to have seen so much of Nesbo's tricksiness I was on less firm ground. (Oh, and I think anyone who says the whole thing is YA probably didn't bother finishing it… Just sayin'.) I think what we end up with is a traditional curate's egg – a mush of the great and the poor. The whole thing, as the horrendously naff cover wants us to believe, is done in playful style, but the levels of play are never really justified. The piece isn't resolved, and it doesn't earn its quirks imho. I was glad to read it – it certainly didn't take much time or much labour – but there are certainly better ways to spend one's Saturday. Three stars is to some extent a rounding-up.

This book just wasn't for me. It's split into three parts which are supposed to be shockingly different, but are actually quite similar, in that none of them grabbed my interest or made me care about the characters.

I can see what the author is trying for here, but it all felt very derivative and just not executed well enough to pique curiosity in the reader. If you'd like to read twisty, psychological horror, I would suggest Catriona Ward is who you are after.

Nesbo is a super-successful author. so lots of readers must love his style, it just wasn't for me.

This was a strange story with a very abrupt conclusion. I think I worked out what was happening but it was very complicated and I think mental illness was involved. I needed to find out what had hapeened but not entirly sure I did. Left me with questions.

This book was so good! It was intriguing and really drawed me in. I'll be reading more of this authors work.

Jo Nesbo is mainly known for his Scandi Noir novels, namely the Harry Hole series. Here he flips the script and gives us a nicely crafted slice of horror.
I want to avoid going into plot details here, it's best to go in as a blank slate.
All in all I loved this book, it twists and turns throughout. Once you think it's heading in a certain direction, Nesbo then flips things 180° and then back again. In summary this is a thought provoking masterclass of a horror and I'm hoping there will be more to come on the same lines from this author.
Highly recommended!

I have no idea where to start with this book, other than to say it was a bit of a mind-mess, and more than a little twisted. As you can guess, I liked it.

The story follows Richard, a teen with a troubled past who has been adopted by his aunt and uncle, and is living in a small town. And he hates it. After a dare goes horribly wrong, the whole town begins to look at him as if he has killed a fellow student. And it is down to Richard to prove what really happened, though no one believes him as his life begins to unravel. And this is only the start of the strangeness!

The concept of this book was great, I loved the three parts and how they linked together. The writing flowed smoothly, with no pretentious language choices. Nesbo has successfully created a creepy book with an unnerving atmosphere.

i normally love Jo Nesbo books and chose this because it sounded so different, not usually a fan of horror stories I found this difficult to actually put into any category. Richard is sent to his aunt and uncle after the tragic deaths of his parent but that's when the trouble starts. Nothing & nobody seem to be what they say they are. Having three parts to the book only added confusion as it didn't seem to know where it was going and when/how to end.

It was a treat having a Harry Hole chapter at the end.......

Nesbo's take on the classic youngster in a new setting horror tale. When 14 year old Richard is sent to live with his aunt and uncle he has a hard time of it. A local boy goes missing when they are out one evening and people are struggling with Richard's explanation. That being that the boy was eaten by the public telephone kiosk. With strange goings on he will need to investigate and prove the cause of the mysteries in ballantyne and what has happened to the young people who go missing. Good old school horror read from the author of the Harry Hole series

I wasn’t expecting a horror story from this author, I would not usually read that genre. In fact, when I realised I was about to stop reading, except that it had me hooked by then due to the excellent writing, and intrigued as to where it was going. Glad I stuck with it because the twists and turns kept me with it, and the final twist left me surprised but satisfied.

I love this book - from the kookie old style horror cover to the absolute nonsense of the story!

It was super easy to get into and I was quickly invested in this odd tale. It is the perfect winter read and if you can give yourself over to the story and not worry ever so much about what is physically possible - then you will love it too!

Proper gory old style horror and I loved it.

Hats off to the author for diversity too - I can't quite believe this is the same person who wrote the Detective Harry Hole books!

Wow! This book took me on quite the journey. Tom is a typical boy mischievous and making his own entertainment. His life starts to take a strange path when things starts happening that makes no sense. I highly recommend this to anyone who like horror and thrillers.

Ooh, I did not realise this was a horror story as Jo Nesbo usually writes crime stories. The first shocking part caught me off guard!, but I was hooked. It had many facets and was a thoroughly good, if different read