Review--Diary of a Haunting by M. Verano

When Paige moves from LA to Idaho with her mom and little brother after her parents’ high-profile divorce, she expects to completely hate her new life, and the small town doesn’t disappoint. Worse yet, the drafty old mansion they’ve rented is infested with flies, spiders, and other pests Paige doesn’t want to think about.

She chalks it up to her rural surroundings, but it’s harder to ignore the strange things happening around the house, from one can of ravioli becoming a dozen, to unreadable words appearing in the walls. Soon Paige’s little brother begins roaming the house at all hours of the night, and there’s something not right about the downstairs neighbor, who knows a lot more than he’s letting on.

Things only get creepier when she learns about the sinister cult that conducted experimental rituals in the house almost a hundred years earlier.

The more Paige investigates, and the deeper she digs, the clearer it all becomes: whatever is in the house, whatever is causing all the strange occurrences, has no intention of backing down without a fight.

Found in the aftermath, Diary of a Haunting collects the journal entries, letters, and photographs Paige left behind.

It took way to long for me to pick of Diary of a Haunting by M. Verano and omigosh this book was terrifyingly creepy! If you are looking for a creeptastic read this Halloween, look no further! Told in diary format, the story of Paige is unraveled before us as she and her family move into their new house that is most assuredly haunted.

When Paige’s parents divorce, her mother packers her and her younger brother, Logan, up to move to a grand old house in Idaho. Only, it’s a little weird. They are greeted by a swarm of flies that never leave, and an increasing hoard of spiders. Paige instantly gets a strange feeling in one of the bedrooms and quickly writes it off, but the strange things in the house keep happening. Especially concerning Logan, as he “chose” the room Paige got the bad vibes.

This book got increasingly creepier as it went along. Paige recaptures everything that happened after the fact but that doesn’t stop the terror from building. I enjoyed the added pictures that were included, though they didn’t really go along with the diary entries themselves, not like an “evidence” situation, more like here is what was described just now. There was nothing overly terrifying in the pictures, so that was a plus.

This book will play with your head, it totally twisted things around for me more than once and I could not figure out what just happened here or there. It’s totally mind-boggling. Be advised that this book might just drive you insane! There were so many twists and turns to the story and then the ending itself, it will have you trying to grasp what just happened.

But if you remember, we are reading everything after the fact in a diary of Paige’s. And oh boy, you have to read carefully or you might miss something. This is definitely one of those reads that will have you turning the pages. I finished this one rather quickly considering how busy things have been for me. Needless to say, I could not put this one down and there’s the fact that diary entries do tend to read quicker.

I will say that the ending needled me a bit in that I did not see it coming and I am still not comprehending what just happened. It’s one THOSE kinds of endings. The ones that will mess with your head and have you flipping back over the pages looking for the signs and just whoa. I am itching for more answers as to the unanswered questions, but honestly, not having them works too. I already placed an order for the next two books of the series before I was halfway through because I could tell I was going to be insanely hooked into this story and I was.

Diary of Haunting is the start of spooky trilogy that will be sure to have you jumping at every noise in the house. It will leave you breathless and perhaps a bit terrified as well. There’s no doubt about it, but M. Verano is a true master of terror!

Overall Rating 5/5 stars