Speaking how I feel about this book is a challenge. In it's own right, it's quite good. Spooky enough, disgusting in exactly the way it wants to be, sardonic and fun in the way it wants to be too. I wish that was where I could leave this. But the author's note confirmed what it was that made it difficult for me to be completely positive about this. I wish it had just transparently used The Fall of the House of Usher as an inspiration, rather than committing to genuinely being a retelling. Instead, the author confirms that she wrote it because she was unsatisfied at how short the original story was and how it lacked concrete answers. I find the brevity and the lack of concrete answers to be the best things about that story. Filling in the details, finding scientific explanations for what happened... it turns The Twilight Zone into Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The mystery, the teetering uncertainty, that is what makes the horror work. Instead, the book must rely on body horror to get its scares—and I admit, it does this very well. I personally WANT to like this. Frustrating that I'm being held back. I wish the author had filed the serial numbers off, to use the fanfiction term for it. You can still have the author's note read the same, and I can be like "A-ha! I thought so! Cleverly done!" Because it IS cleverly done! But clever is, unfortunately, not the same as enduringly terrifying.