Review: Dark House ( Experiment in Terror #1) by Karina Halle

My ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars.
CCuriosity takes over prudence when Perry Palomino decides to explore her uncle’s dilapidated Light house in his farm on the coast of Oregon. This is the fateful night when everything begins. The light house is rumoured to be haunted and Perry, who is bored that night, cannot stop herself from visiting his light house. Something about it is calling her, giving her strange dreams where she wakes up frightened and gasping for breath. While being scared out of her mind in the 'haunted’ lighthouse she encounters Dex, a producer/cameraman trying to film this haunted building. Perry doesn’t think too much of this encounter but posts the video of that night on her sister blog which becomes an instant hit. This attracts the attention of Dex Foray, the man she met at the Light house, who offers to film her explorations of the light house and produce it to be showed on a low-budget webcast called Shownet. Hence begins Perry and Dex’s adventures of the haunted and night crawlers.

Perry was instantly likeable to me. If you are looking for your run of the mill kick ass Urban Fantasy heroine than look somewhere else as she is not one. She may kick ass but in a completely different way. Everything thing with Perry is different.

Somehow, by dealing with the dead, I had never felt so alive.

She is unlike all the heroines I have read so far yet she says many similarities with them. I loved that she think she has weight issues and her confidence kept on changing and flipping making her so much real. The narration is brilliant as very descriptive and I love the use of brackets to describe little info which adds so much fun and flavour to situations. Perry had this weird sense of humour which had me cracking up on numerous occasions.

“How did this happen?” he asked, referring to my neck brisuses.
I had to think quickly.” Sexual asphyxiation. You ever tried it? You should.”

Dex, Dex, Dex! Sigh. Why me? I have such a weakness for troubled men. I cannot help but love dodgy, untrustworthy crazy men. From the first time Perry sees Dex, she fancies him . Can I blame her? I would have jumped his bones if I were her. Again he is not your typical alpha hero with super power and great looks. He is of average height and skinny as hell. Dark wild hair and eye brow ring ( I mean seriously? How 90’s).

“Well, shit, aren’t you just Mary fucking Wonderwoman”.

I love the way Halle describes his eyes, made me weak in my knees. Well, I, Perry had no chance. He is the mysterious guy Perry meets at the light house who later becomes her partner. What I loved about him as a character was how he was so diffcult to read. I could never figure out what he was thinking. He keeps changing every few minutes and he is so mercurial. I’m sure there is a lot of back story to him which I’m hoping will be revealed slowly.

“All right, enough loyygagging,” he barked.”Lets have a concrete plan of action for tonight. As much I love to fly by the seat of my pants and shit everywhere, I don’t think we can afford to do that this time. Maybe next time. Sound good?”

Every other reader keeps on saying how real the characters are so I’m going to re affirm how true this is. They are flawed and not perfect. Perry has weight and self confidence issues, has had drug problems at school and thinks she is generally a loser in life. Dex for now still seems like a mystery but he is moody and flippant. I also liked that part from Perry nobody else finds Dex as attractive as she does.

I wasn’t blown away by the mystery and the ghost but I wasn’t reading this mystery. I was in for the ride and what a ride it was. It was spooky, creepy and scary. Halle has a very descriptive style of writing which gives you chills. I was glad I was only a reader and not actually experiencing it. There were a few editing issues but as this is a self published book I still think it was pretty good.

"Today the ocean was a stranger. Cold, rough and ready to take me out. As the waves sucked back, they grasped the wet sand like desparate finegrs, reaching for me."

I can go on and on about how much I enjoyed this book but unless you read it I cannot convey what I’m trying to say. The mystery was resolved but a lot of questions were left unanswered.

I’m surprised how not a lot of people have read or heard about this series and I think every reader who reads Paranormal/ Urban Fantasy books should give this a go. So if you want to read something new, where the heroine is not rude and the hero is not an alpha and probably is as scared as the reader reading this, then this is the book to read. It has everything the sexual tension, the sexy banter, action, adventure and a writing which takes to the exact spot where you can experience everything without leaving your sofa.

Lastly I will be leaving you with my favourite moment from the book:

I waited for him to look up. He eventually did and gave me a bright, innocent flash of straight teeth.
I narrowed my eyes at him.”Were you staring at my ass?”
“Yes,”he replied without hesitation . His eyes were round and crazy. Or playful, if you wanted to use a polite term for crazy.