A Head Full Of Ghosts - by Paul Tremblay [Review]

 A Head Full Of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Review

(picture from amazon)

Synopsis 

This is a story which follows a suburban New England family  who discover that their daughter may be suffering from acute schizophrenia. The story is written from the youngest daughter Merry's point of view. The family tries their very best to get medical help for their troubled teen Marjorie but matters just appear to get worse and worse until the dad convinces the family to involve a local Catholic priest. Fifteen years following the horrific madness that threw the family into madness, the younger sister Merry is interviewed by a bestselling writer and delves into the traumatic events that occurred. 

My thoughts

If you need a story to have you gripping onto the edge of your seat, then this is it! This book starts of with establishing the clear bond Marjorie and Merry have with one another and outlining the typical teenage behaviours that Marjorie starts experiencing. It does however quickly turn quite dark, the two sisters shared a love of writing stories about Merry's favourite character from another book, however, Meredith writes her own story which is far darker than any others. From this point on Meredith's behaviour changes from typical sister tormenting her younger sister to something else quite sinister. I really thought Paul did a great job demonstrating how good of a bond the two sisters had and how quickly that bond deteriorated and the effect that had on Merry. Meredith's dad is devoutly Catholic, however, the rest of the family do not share his religious views but after many arguments, they agree to introduce a local Catholic priest to their troubled daughter Marjorie in the hope of healing her. Paul manages to perfectly illustrate the strain that Marjorie's behaviour is taking on the entire family and perfectly sets out their undoing. I don't want to go into the ending too much as I do not want to ruin it for other readers but the ending whilst absolutely creepy, actually broke my heart in more ways than one. It really makes you question whether Marjorie was suffering from a mental illness or whether, she was in fact possessed by a demon. The final twist was a knife in the gut and I would have loved to hear what happened to Merry following the interview. 

One main issue I had with the book was the blog posts that are included, I found the way they were written were highly exaggerated and made me feel like rolling my eyes just reading the way the blogger wrote although the blog posts do very well get you to rethink everything you think you have learned from the story and to get you questioning how much of this whole ordeal was real or not.

My second issue was introducing the tv show, I am still a little unclear as to why that was added as I don't feel it served the story any real purpose or depth.

Overall: 4/5 stars

Find me on twitter: @InkDrinkerDawn

Find Paul Tremblay on Twitter: @paulGtremblay