Rooms by Lauren Oliver

3.5 out of 5 stars

This book is very unlike my usual reads. Not that that's a bad thing, but it explains why I thought it was weird. Like, really weird. Rooms by Lauren Oliver is a paranormal young adult read. It centers on a dysfunctional family that moves into a house whose inhabitants are ghosts. The house is a country house that had been the property of wealthy Richard Walker. Now that he has passed, the members of his immediate family- his alcoholic of an ex-wife, his depressed and troubled teenage son, and his daughter Minna, who seems like the most normal person in this strange family- have come together for the will-reading and distribution of inheritance. Each thinks that they are alone and misunderstood, but what they don't know is that they aren't alone. In fact, two ghosts, Alice and Sandra- who had both previously lived in the same country house in different times- have much of nothing to do except to watch and listen to the affairs of the new and temporary dwellers of their home.

I thought this book was okay. And I think the reason I thought this was because along with it being different from my usual reads as I previously mentioned, I was left depressed and creeped out. One thing I noticed though that was pleasant was the structure of the chapters. Each character had a chapter of their own (even Amy, who's like, six) and what's interesting is that the ghosts, Alice and Sandra's chapters are first-person perspectives while the living character's POV's are in third-person. It was kind of confusing initially, I would sometimes have to go back to the start of the chapter to see whose POV I was reading, but then as I went on, I became more and more familiar with each character's style of speech, the content of the chapter, and the way they think. But it's their thoughts that got me depressed, especially Trenton. That kid is mentally messed up.

In summary, It was okay. Three and a half stars. This my first Lauren Oliver book, but I don't think reading this bettered or worsened my views of her other books, in terms of expectations. By the way, I won the ARC of this on Goodreads.