Beneath the Stairs: A Novel

In upstate New York, there is a haunted house shaped like an octagon set deep in the woods. Over the years, many kids have dared each other to go in, and fourteen-year-olds Clare and Abby are no different. They go in with some friends and discover the house is mostly dilapidated as no one has lived there since the 1960s when a man murdered his wife and children. But there is a metal door to the basement, seemingly out of place, that opens on its own.

Abby gets shut in there for a few minutes and she’s never the same again. Twenty years later, Clare gets a call to tell her that Abby is comatose after overdosing in an apparent suicide attempt at that house. What would make her go back? Clare will have to go back to the beginning to find the end.

This book is very well written and atmospherically haunting. The story itself is more about the childhood traumas of these two friends and their growth into adulthood, but there are creepy moments and multiple mysteries wrapped up in the story as well. I would have loved more expansion on the story to learn more about each of the mysteries, but I still enjoyed it over all.