Review: Dollhouse

Dollhouse by Anya Allyn

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Dress-up turns deadly. . .

When Cassie’s best friend, Aisha, disappears during a school hike, Cassie sets off with Aisha’s boyfriend Ethan and their best friend Lacey, determined to find her. But the mist-enshrouded mountains hold many secrets, and what the three teens discover is far more disturbing than any of them imagined: beneath a rundown mansion in the woods lies an underground cavern full of life-size toys and kidnapped girls forced to dress as dolls.

Even as Cassie desperately tries to escape the Dollhouse, she finds herself torn between her forbidden feelings for Ethan, and her intense, instinctive attraction to The Provider, a man Cassie swears she has known before…

Because Cassie’s capture wasn’t accidental, and the Dollhouse is more than just a prison where her deepest fears come true—it’s a portal for the powers of darkness. And Cassie may be the only one who can stop it.


Moon Shine Art Spot:

This book was so frighteningly horrific in places that I had scary thoughts if it as I tried to doze off one night. I had to read it like a maniac to find out that it's a dang cliff hanging tease. Having said that though, I did enjoy the freaky ride. I was provided an advance copy for an honest review and there are so many things I'd like to cover I am sure I will forget something.

Despite the fact that I loved the book, it dud seem to be several stories in one book. There was a teen love triangle, missing girls, grandpa involved somehow, and the friends who finally figure out how to get in the "dollhouse" they can't escape from have dreamed about it before. The book honestly does get a little confusing at the end if you are not totally engulfed in it. I can understand how it would lies some readers, but it honestly makes me want a better explanation that that horrid if hanger I was left with.

The concept of "living dolls" being made of the girls who had come up missing was scary enough to make a string person wet the bed, but then there is so much more to come. Thankfully that is explained ... Freaky, but well explained. After all, a child with nothing but time needs some play things. The captive girls and Ethan have to dress up like dolls and play along with their beyond strange hostess and her animated Raggedy Ann Doll, Clown, etc. or else the dolls punish them.

Of course as this is freaking me out, I also find out that Cassie can somehow pass through walls to a carnival and spooky house on the other side of the underground cave type place they are captured in. There she meets "the Provider". Apparently the whole doll situation is only part of the story that launches into ghosts, time travel?, and some type if mythic creature that has to be fed sacrifices.

It is a pretty wild ride and quite easy to get lost towards the end of the book. There is something linking Cassie to the house and the story and possibly Ethan too. Guess I'll have to read the next book to find out what. I think the dollhouse / underground world could have made a good book on it's own without the confusion of some kind of time travel, time freezing, different demention hopping that I do not even fully understand.



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