Dean Koontz once again writes another fantastic book. Some of his books are a hit or miss depending on the audience. Some books like Innocence were hard to get into, but The Husband was entertaining. The case for The House at the End of the World is in the middle.

Katie lost everything after a traumatic event caused her to spiral into an emotional train wreck. She ran away to a small island called Jacob’s Ladder which is in the middle of a large lake. She lives alone with a fox named Michael J. This lonely life makes her a hermit, but Katie prefers solitude, and in her loneliness, she handles her grief by painting.

Ringrock is a neighboring island close to Jacob’s Ladder. She suspects it has a government facility on the island. She obsesses about what is going on on the island. Is there something fishy going on over there? Is it all in her head?

When two mysterious men show up on her island looking for someone or something, she realizes that Ringrock is not just some strange facility. Survival mode kicks in after the odd appearance of these men. Something was going on in Ringrock; whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Katie notices that even the animals are acting oddly. After a bizarre visit from a stranger seeking assistance, Katie and this stranger fight for their lives.

This book is a lot of fun to read once we get halfway through. The book’s first half is slow, and I waited for the hook to pull and drag me deeper into the story. It wasn’t until the action began that I felt more interested in continuing with the story. Yes, the first part is lovely to read, Koontz writes terrific prose, but I found it lacks a little in what usually draws his readers in.

The horror was a little predictable and cliche, but sometimes it is comforting to read something that never changes, and other times it gets boring. For me, I enjoyed the horror. Sometimes I questioned if this story was worth the buy, and in the end, I say, yes, it is.