Synopsis:
Sal lives in a haunted house.
He longs to be ordinary, but when the strangest of strangers arrives on his doorstep – a fellow outcast called Pax – his life grows even more complicated.
Sal goes on to develop an unlikely friendship with Pax, whose love for all things spooky drew him to the house and its inhabitants. But as the two grow closer, the true nature of the hauntings is gradually revealed.
Will Sal find the courage to conquer his ghosts, or will he risk losing Pax for good?
Review:
I feel like I was a little tricked by The Other Ones. The synopsis promised that this would be a paranormal/haunted house book, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The few moments that you do get of ‘paranormal activity’ were some of the best written parts. They genuinely put a chill down my spine. Sadly, The Other Ones is not a paranormal book and is in fact a contemporary teen romance.
The romance was fine, if a little over the top. Sal and Pax were cute but their relationship had almost zero substance. Sal is actually pretty mean to him to begin with, so his romantic feelings felt like they came out of nowhere.
I wish Elsie had more depth. She could have been a really interesting character but all you know about her is that she used to be popular but now isn’t because of a rumour her ex-boyfriend spread about her. She has one big moment and even then the conversation isn’t about her. It feels like she was included just so this book didn’t have such a heavily male cast.
Well actually, none of the characters had a lot going on really. Sal’s family dynamic was interesting and he could have been a great main character but his whole thing was just being mean and not caring about anyone.
The revelations about the ‘haunted house’ were naff to say the least. If you’re promising a haunted house story, you can’t disregard that completely for normal family problems. This next part is a huge spoiler, so skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to know what happens.
The house was never haunted. Sal’s dad died five years ago and his mom is convinced that their house is haunted and he’s a ghost living there. The few paranormal moments you do get are actually about Sal’s mom abandoning them and they’re trying to cover it up. But don’t worry, she comes back eventually but gets in a car crash, which drives a wedge between everyone because absolutely nothing was happening in this book before that happened. There needed to be a reason for a third act break up and obviously having a parent almost die and your boyfriend being annoyed that you didn’t mention she’d abandoned you, is a great one.
Apologies that this review is a little all over the place. I’m struggling to piece my thoughts together about how disappointed I was in The Other Ones. I was really looking forward to a spooky halloween read, which this was not.
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