The Apartment by S. L. grey

Author : S.L. Grey
Title : The Apartment
Publisher : Pan
Published : 23/07/2017
Pages : 304
Genre : Mystery / Horror

     Mark and Steph are struggling to move on with their lives after armed robbers broke into their home and brutalized them. Shaken, they decide to get away and leave their troubles behind. A house swap in Paris with a couple they meet online, the Petits, seems to provide the perfect escape. But upon arriving for a week's luxurious break, they find themselves in a festering, run-down apartment. And when Steph attempts to contact the Petits, she gets no answer. Mark and Steph try to make the most of the trip, but they are unable to relax. After a series of increasingly unsettling events, they decide to return home. Yet when they arrive, neither of them can shake the feeling that there's now something sinister about their own house. As time passes, Mark is terrorized by a series of unsettling visions. But is it all in his imagination or is there a far more worrying explanation ...?

     So this time I have strayed from my usual genre's and gone into for something in the horror genre. Sometimes I like to go beyond the dark and twisted detective and mystery novels, and into the world of things that may or may not exist. If I'm going to read a horror book I want something that's going to completely creep me out and question walking through my house at night. So when I came across The Apartment I was hoping for just that, Could this tale of people abroad stir the hairs on the back of my neck.

     For Mark and Steph, the events of the very recent past are threatening to tear apart there present. So what better way to try and fix things than to get away from it all and have some alone time. I liked the way in which these two come across the trauma they suffered seemed to be genuine. The author not only plays this off in the way the deal with the events of the book but also in how they interact with each other. They feel like two people struggling to keep there lives together. As the story unfolds the cracks in their relationship open up making them question everything. It is a rare thing to have a book with so few other people in it. This two become fish out of water in a foreign land, and as so we get to experience the very claustrophobic atmosphere they inhabit. We are forced to experience everything that happens to them as if we were stood in the room next to them.   

     For the most part, this is a story of unsettling occurrences. The apartment is not as described by the poster, and as such you are put on edge waiting to see what happens next. It's an odd thing to spend most of the book waiting for something or someone to jump out on you. This is defiantly a slow burner of a book at least to me. There are a few genuine moments that I would describe as a real horror to read. When the plot goes back to the home invasion that leads our leads on this path it is a distinctly unpleasant experience. But for the most part, I would think of this more as a psychological horror book. It's about watching the pressure build up in these two as more and more strange events take place. It asks us how much you can take before it's all too much and a horrific outcome becomes inevitable.

     I like the ending to this book it left me with questions as to how much of what had taken place was real and how much was just in the characters minds. And in the end, I think this will be down to the individual readers choice and beliefs. But in the end for me it was just a little to slow, I prefer my books with a little more paces. while the book is not long I found my self-trying to reader quicker in the hopes that something would click. Now I realize this is not the fault of the book merely in the way I prefer my stories told. Overall it was an OK book just not a right fit, so I hope this might grab you more than it did me.