Oh man this really  hurts to say. I really  had high hopes for the book because  it started so damn good. There was so much trauma  so much tension. The connection  between  nell and Theo  changing  from friendly  to nell hating Theo to more intimate connection between nell and  Theo to the house lore and  incidents  to a just lazy and kinda pointless flat conclusion. 

I know this is considered  a classic  but like  poe's house of usher, although  not as bad as that this is just  overhyped and not as amazing as people say or how it starts.

Out of respect  and because it was a great start and had so many options to lead the story I give it a 3.0 but in good conscious I cannot give it higher than  that with the awful  last parts of the book.

Jackson did an amazing job with this book. It is spooky from the first page to the last and the narrative arc is satisfying and scary. I am not usually a horror reader, but I thoroughly enjoyed this classic story.

Cute story. I love the Netflix series a lot more, to be truthful

I am very confused which I think was entirely the point. I also want to immediately start a re-read to get a different perspective now that I don't have to try to figure out the resolution.
This is definitely horror, though not the kind full of jumpscares that makes you look over your shoulder nervously when you read. It's creepy, it's claustrophobic and it is scary, but the horror comes from the feeling of unease and the engagement with disturbing topics. It is also surprisingly funny and I now have to read more mid-century American fiction where witty characters just talk to each other because the conversations were a delight.
I liked how the novel played with expectations of horror storys and used that to its full extent. It plays around with concepts of realism and expectable behaviour and while that made me constantly try to figure out what was actually going on, what was the twist, what was the explanation for all the weirdness, it also opened up possibilities for discussions of the main topics: home, belonging, paranoia, reality and imagination, guilt.
It's not exactly a satisfying read where everything comes together, you have nice character growth and a complete resolution, but that's kinda the point. A lot of whats happening isn't being told and the reader is supposed to scramble at the bits of information provided. The kind of unreliable narration that we now think of as overdone but incredibly well done and especially for its time innovative.
Another nice surprise were the queer subtext and the feminist undertones!

I sat down with this book because I was expecting a classic, cozy haunted house story. And I got that. What I also got was intense despair. Eleanor is such a fragile young heroine, whose life thus far has been miserable. In fact, her first real taste of freedom and happiness is on her way to Hill House, and you desperately want this to be the beginning of her story, and not the end. This book is also just so incredibly gay. Like its all buried in the subtext but really, I mean, come on. Those gals are not just pals. 

I have no idea why everyone is raving about this book. There's virtually no plot, the characters are flat and almost indistinguishable as they are all snarky and selfish.

It took me weeks to read it, even though it's a thin book, because I was bored and didn't want to be with the characters. 

The writing itself isn't bad, but I feel like the author only tells and never shows. She describes the house as a scary place, and repeats it dozens of times, but never tells you why it's scary. Essentially "it's scary, trust me bro". 

Only thing about this book that I liked are the convos between the characters. Especially when they are introducing themselves, they're funny. But then later on it changes and Theo is mean to Eleanor, for a reason I must have missed, and apparently there's been an incident with Luke I missed. Then suddenly Theo is nice again, then mean again. I was completely lost, these characters make no sense at all.