I had always considered myself a nice person. One who could always find the silver lining in a seemingly hopeless situation, someone who could lift others up when they’re straggling behind, and a follower of not only the golden rule but a great “golden” rule: if you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all. Yessir-e-bob, that was me, until I read this book.

First of all.

My favorite line: “…he wasn’t dead; only badly injured. (Squirrelly Character) hit him over the head and made sure he became dead. In other words, he murdered (Unfortunate Dude).”

This line pretty much sums up the writing and the overall, let’s play fast and loose with words here for a moment, “logical” flow of the entire plot line for Elayne Kull’s The Keyhole House.

The basic premise of this story is that the newly-widowed Ashley moves with her teenaged and (shocker) stereotypically attitude-infested daughter, Saia, to a house that has been Ashley’s dream home since childhood: a large, historic brick home known as “The Keyhole House.”  The house is, brace yourselves, haunted, by a ghost that can walk, talk,  and shoot the breeze with “sensitive” individuals. Aside from a few spelling errors and the fact that the book read like a short story submitted at the last minute for peer review so that the author could get credit for a creative writing elective by the end of the semester (I wouldn’t know from experience or anything…),  the “normality” and “humanlike” conversationalist quality of the ghost really pulled me out of the story. The fact that we are aware of who the killers are before the story has a chance to progress, gives the story a severe lack in mystery, and renders the one plot line that is supposed to be the “big reveal” anticlimactic.

Listen, folks. Life’s too short to drink bad wine, and to read even worse books, and no amount of wine in the world would make this whole shebang interesting…

Oddly enough, I’ve said the same about a few dates, but the rule still stands. Perhaps that should be the new golden rule.