Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“It was 1998, the year of Britney Spears and Furbies. My home was Birmingham, England. I was ten years old, and I was happy.”
Martin Gable recalls the horrors his family had to face when they unwittingly bring in a demonic entity into their home when he was ten years old in the horror novel “The Room Upstairs” by Iain Rob Wright. The experience scars him forever because even though his family was struggling financially, and he didn’t have the best relationship with his mercurial teen sister Sarah, at least he was a content boy who had a ‘cool’ best friend, a mother who cherished him, and a stepfather he got along really well with.
Almost 200 pages long, “The Room Upstairs” is an easy-to-follow story with limited characters and a simple narrative since the plot is narrated through the eyes of a preteen boy. Martin is a regular little boy who loves watching wrestling on TV, drinking soda, and dreaming of McDonald’s. Things take a terrible turn for his family when they buy some things from a car boot sale (that’s what yard sales are called in the UK), and Martin is the first one to make a connection with the car boot sale date and the awful violent events that occur in his home, beginning with the appearance of a mysterious door.
I like how the story doesn’t take place in an isolated place or in some crumbling old mansion; instead, Martin’s house is in a packed neighborhood, with their neighbors and friends only a call away. However, it’s a mystery man who shows up to help Martin and his family out of their terrifying ordeal as more and more people start to violently die around them and the police begin to get mighty suspicious.
While “The Room Upstairs” isn’t very scary, it does have some uncomfortable violent scenes that might make readers flinch. Maybe I am too used to watching a lot of horror movies to have a book give me jitters, but since the author uses simple language and doesn’t waste time on tedious descriptions, it turned out to be a quick and entertaining enough read. The climax concludes on a conclusive and optimistic note, where Martin, now much older, utilizes his experience with the sinister entity that traumatized his family to assist others in overcoming their own monsters.
Rating: 3 on 5. “The Room Upstairs” is also available on Kindle Unlimited.
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