Review: nobody mixes spooky and horror like Nicholson
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 22, 2012
Freeman Mills is off to yet another group home.  He's had a troubled childhood.  If you were subject to torture by the very person who should love you above all others and were able to read people's minds as a result, you'd need therapy too.  Freeman is a loner.  He's only out for himself.  He trusts no one and with good reason.  But when he finds himself a 'guest' of The Wendover Group Home and is subject to even more experiments that will blur the line between the living and the dead, he'll find out that trust may just be the only thing that will see him through.The Home is part ghost story, part horror novel, and all Scott Nicholson.  Nicholson has a great way of writing flawed and twisted characters, each with their own believable motivations and personalities.  Freeman is the tough guy.  Not willing to be Defender of The Weak or Hero of the Innocent.  He's had too much pain in his life to look out for anybody other than himself.  Starelen is a councelor that believes in helping the kids, not to make herself feel better, but to well and truly help the troubled kids.  Bondourant is a misguided holy man who can't even see through is own faults, much less actually help the children, despite how diluded he has himself.  Krakowski is the head of the facility, a genius to some, but can't even see the damage he's doing to the kids with his experiements because of his own hubris.  It's a means to an end to him.  As you can see, The Home is populated with all types of different characters, from the truly troubled, to the truly selfless, to the maniacle, to the downright evil and Nicholson writes them all with flourish and style that had me sucked in from the very first page.This novel is well and truly creepy, especially when a figure from Freeman's past rears its ugly head to work along with the shadow organization 'The Trust'.  Nicholson has a gift for putting his own flair on the 'haunted house' genre and the setting is a melevolent character in and of itself thanks to his use of vivid imagery.If there's one complaint I had about the book it's the way several of the characters speak, namely Freeman and another 'guest' of the home, Vicky.  These are children, twelve years old in point of fact.  Sometimes though, they read more like young adults than pre teens.  I haven't met many 12 year olds that have used the word 'unexpurgated' in a conversation.  That and perhaps the 'final showdown' goes on for a little too long.  But, those are minor complaints (no book is perfect).If you're a fan of Scott Nicholson or a fan of horror/ghost stories, you should check this one out.  He's really one of the best in the genre right now and The Home is another great example as to why.Highly recommended.