Customer Reviews

The Unseen

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is dangerous territory for writers of the genre: paranormal psychological phenomena. Is ESP real and measurable? Can the wall between reality and the otherworldly be breached? Certainly, many have tried to transport from the living to the dead, most notable the Victorian penchant for séances and communications with the deceased, often fraudulent attempts to separate grieving family members from their money. Sokoloff knocks on that dark door again in this thriller, as two professors from Duke University try to recreate a 1965 experiment with such tragic consequences that all records have been sealed until recently. But now Professors Laurel MacDonald and Brendan Cody have undertaken to reassemble the critical participants of the original experiment, a mysterious study in ESP at Folger House, using two high-testing students as the other members of the quartet.

Professor MacDonald is new to the Duke faculty. She has come from California, a shattering emotional trauma leaving her vulnerable and rootless, transplanted to an unfamiliar place to begin anew. It is not surprising that Laurel joins forces with Brendan when the charming coworker helps her locate the mystery-shrouded Folger House where they will conduct the experiment. MacDonald and Cody live in a "publish or perish" environment, the subject of their study having broad appeal in a cynical world where such things as poltergeists remain a source of public curiosity. Folger House is intimidating, the four visitors an odd blend of skepticism and curiosity. Tyler Mountford is undoubtedly brilliant, but vaguely untrustworthy. Katrina de Vore clearly has a serious crush on Professor Cody, who slightly resembles the fiancé that Laurel left behind in California. Brendan is perhaps the most obviously invested in the success of the experiment.

The author has primed this pump for maximum unpredictability, her anxious characters thrust into a remote location that reeks of a menace and the past, of madness and mystery, of poltergeists and inexplicable occurrences. Modern technology may not be sufficient when dark forces rule and foolish humans call out to the unknown to manifest itself. Strange dreams, shifting perspectives, loud thumps and rock showers abound, as Cody and MacDonald find themselves just as unmoored as the screaming Katrina when the mirrors shatter in her room. While Laurel hovers between logic and fear, the house comes alive with malice. A denouement beckons, inviting, but I haven't quite made the leap of faith required by this thriller. Terror hovers at the edges of this tale, but never exactly reaches the threshold, lots of racket and banging, but just this side of truly memorable or believable. Luan Gaines/2009.

I love haunted house books! And I so wanted to love (even like) this one when I started it. The blurb sounded so promising, the premise familiar yet with a potentially good spin.

Unfortunately, the characters were two dimensional preventing being able to connect with them as real people, and the writing had the style of someone who started as an author writing romance novels. Even the plot became a letdown with huge plotholes that made it so hard to suspend disbelief. (I won't go into detail as they would be spoilers.) I finished the book just on principle and hoping for a redeeming miracle at the end. No such luck.

Sadly, with so much potential this novel was just a disappointment.

*Warning: Review may contain minor spoilers*

Alexandra Sokoloff has quickly become one of my favorite authors; after blazing through "The Harrowing," "The Price," and "Book of Shadows," I decided to give her 3rd novel a shot, "The Unseen." Of all four of her novels, this seemed the one to be the most mixed in the reviews; nevertheless, after finding great success in the previously three novels I'd read, I assumed (mistake) this would be just as good and cement her as one of the best up and coming horror/suspense novelists. While I still believe that is the case, this book did not help that cause whatsoever.

The Unseen is another supernatural yarn from Ms. Sokoloff, but is nothing like her other work; the book is quite tedious, the characters are lacking (for the most part) and there is really no climax to make the slow rising action worthwhile. As a basic outline, Dr. Laurel MacDonald is a new faculty member in Duke University's Psychology Department. Having come from California to completely forget her past life, she happens across a display on the parapsychology lab at Duke from the early 20th century, and finds out there are over 700 cases of files from said department that suddenly and mysteriously closed in the mid sixties. A colleague of hers shares the same interest, and, long story made short (not in the novel, unfortunately), they discover there was a house where the lab conducted a poltergeist experiment and something went terribly wrong. They decide to do the same experiment in the same house, using two students that have shown strong psi abilities as was done in the previous experiment.

Without delving further into the plot and giving away any spoilers, I can honestly say that this was a very disappointing novel. The intrigue factor was kept relatively high, despite needing to slog through the first two-thirds of the book, because of Sokoloff's clear talent and her ability to fire on all cylinders especially towards the end of a novel. In the case of "The Unseen," there was no huge, pyrotechnic climax to make up for the dull and overly lengthy rising action. Furthermore, the characters are just too two-dimensional and we really can't relate with them too well, taking away an emotional attachment we may have had during the storyline. This is a real shame, because Sokoloff took an interesting supernatural premise and really did nothing with it; at points it seemed as though she kept writing to see if she could come up with something at the end and make it all worthwhile. Sadly, she didn't: while there is a bit of a twist at the end, it's just too little and too late to save the book from its ultimate mediocrity.

Final Rating: 2.5*/5*

I read a lot of horror and supernatural fiction so naturally I have read all of Sokoloff's books and I liked this one the most. One warm April afternoon I spotted "The Unseen" with the corner of my eye at my local library while waiting for some complaint resolution ( someone took my Patterson book that I had on hold) and ended up walking home with it instead, after finishing it I still want to get my own copy to read again, the paper back coming out has a fantastic cover and this is something that I admired and I definitely want to read again in the future. The book started off slowly but somehow I kept coming back to the story, time constraints made it a slow read but I kept crawling back to it, I just had to know what happened. The novel has an air of sophistication to it, there is a certain amount of succulence in the paragraphs and after reading Alex's "The Price" and "The Harrowing" I can definitely say that this book shows the growth and tightness that the author managed to establish rather well. This might not please everyone but after finishing I smiled, I liked this book, I liked it a lot!

Parapsychology and poltergeists are the meat of the story, or rather finding out if any of it actually occurred, the failed eerie Rhine ESP experiments at the Duke University parapsychology department have been buried and almost forgotten for forty years, that is until the dusty files ( 700 boxes of them) somehow call to Lauren, the new teacher who has seeked refuge and solace at the infamous Duke library under the stern eye of librarian Warden. Young and sensitive Lauren has moved away from a painful memory she left behind along with her beloved San Francisco; her cheating fiancée and that awful unexplained accident with mirrors are all in the past, that is until she runs across the old files that spark her interest in a new scholarly project. ESP has been a popular talent in her family and Lauren's interest and quest for closure has driven her to solve the riddle of the Rhine experiment that have shut an expensive house and put students in mental institution. Lauren has no idea what really awaits at the house, she thinks it's a hoax but she fears that it could be something real, something that will not only satisfy but perhaps even kill her curiosity. Equipped with plenty of food, score sheets and a fellow teacher and two bright students, she sets out to find the house and for once solve it's solemn mystery.

Full of scares, enticing build up and even sexual tension, The Unseen guarantees a satisfying read, one perhaps best spend with someone else close by, just in case it gets too intense. I especially loved the shocking ending and the final pages, this proves that the author has what it takes, I can't wait for her next novel. This is a brightly woven tapestry full of wondrous words, the book only gets better the more I think about it and that's definitely what reading is all about.

- Kasia S.

The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff
May 26th, 2009
4 stars

The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff is a mystery/paranormal.

After finding her fiancée with another woman, Laurel MacDonald breaks off her engagement. Humiliated, Laurel decides to look for a fresh start. She accepts an appointment at Duke University in North Carolina. As in any institution she knows the key to retaining her job is based on any articles, grants, or published books she can produce and therefore raise the regard of the school. Fortunately, she stumbles into a major find. She discovers 700 mysterious storage boxes of Dr. Rhine's work on parapsychology. Dr Rhine did curious work on poltergeist activity. Her interest peaked; she finds no organization to their sudden filing nor reasons for the abrupt closing of the lab. Was it negligence that caused them to be packed in a mess or is there another secret the university doesn't want anybody finding? During her research she finds a suspicious and sudden death at the same time and reference to a place called Folger House.

She decides to join resources with Professor Brendon Cody, a cognitive behavior therapy. Searching for students with more than the average ESP scores, to help them find any potential poltergeist. They find two candidates. Tyler Mountford, the young man who conned her into thinking the auditorium was haunted and Katrina DeVore, a young woman infatuated with Cody and quite jealous of Laurel.

Planning to replicate the Dr. Rhine's experiments they move into the Folger House and for a while it is more like an amusement park's haunted house. Everything seems normal, but when unexplained things happen, they have to wonder, is it their test subjects and practical jokes, or is the house playing with them?

The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff will appeal to both the current generation of ghost hunters and to my generation with its references to this novel are made. It is rich in details. The end blew me away! I was NOT expecting it. I would rank this a solid four.

Reviewed by Jackie from the Bookaholics Romance Book Club

Wow, reading the mixed reviews, it is clear that there are very different types of readers. I think, for the specific audience the book is written for, it is successful. This is a good read as a psychological thriller delving into the occult. Much of the action takes place in the mind of the protagonist, which may be why it seems to move slowly for some people. For me, it brought to mind parallels with other ghost stories, but this did not distract from the tale here. I found the information about Duke and the Zener cards fascinating. I appreciated the research that went into the story. The plot slowly builds tension, and by the end, I could not put it down. I wanted to know what happened. The price was a bit high for a Kindle book, but I felt satisfied at the end of the novel.

I've been wavering between three or four stars with The Unseen. I've read Alexandra Sokoloff's previous work. I thought The Harrowing was great and I absolutely loved The Price. But something about The Unseen made it not as captivating as the other two.

I love haunted house stories. Always have. There's just so much build up in them and most of the time, it delivers. That was one of my problems with The Unseen. Firstly, it took a long while for anything remotely creepy to happen. Usually I don't mind it since it sets the mood up earlier. But this didn't happen. While it took about a hundred pages for anything to get going, I felt that while the author was building up the characters, the mood just wasn't being set up. There was no eerie sense of foreboding in the first hundred pages.

But when things start to get going, they really got going. The last hundred pages were very intense, though, it wasn't exactly creepy nor scary. Just a bit thrilling. Another aspect that bothered me was that there were more questions than answers when I finished reading the book. I know that sometimes horror novels have to keep that sense of mystery, but this one just had way too many threads that went unexplored.

The premise was very intriguing, though. And while I wasn't particularly scared, I was interested enough to keep reading the book. It just fell a little bit flat to me. I would recommend her other books, The Harrowing and The Price, slightly more than this one.

Alexandra Sokoloff's novels flirt, entrance and seduce. Yes, they have elements of suspense, horror and, of course, romance. But unlike many works of fiction that skirt the borders of the horror genre or embrace it wholeheartedly, Sokoloff gently (and, on occasion, not so gently) nudges her reader into that bright, airy room with the crisp sheets and the partner with eyes so full of promise. It isn't until the spiders stop dropping on your bare back that you realize maybe all is not as it seems, even though the webs here and there should have given you plenty of warning.

Sokoloff's work is much closer to Shirley Jackson's than to Craig Spector's; I was especially put in the mind of the former's work while reading THE UNSEEN, Sokoloff's latest novel. It is not that Sokoloff treads the territory that Jackson explored so well; rather, Sokoloff is both completing the work that Jackson left undone while expanding the boundaries that Jackson staked out. Thus, when you read this book, please remember my opening remarks.

The first third of THE UNSEEN entrances. We watch how Dr. Laurel MacDonald, a professor of psychology, catches her fiancée in a leg-lock with a graduate student and immediately moves herself and her emotional baggage to Durham, North Carolina, where she has accepted a teaching position at Duke University. Mindful of the publish-or-perish maxim, MacDonald is struggling for a book topic when she stumbles upon the records of the Rhine ESP experiments that were conducted at Duke. MacDonald feels a strange draw to the research that was done, and more so when she discovers that her uncle, a gentle if odd recluse, appears to have some vague abilities of his own in the realm.

While setting up her story, Sokoloff describes Durham and the Duke campus with an appreciative and practiced eye; she is one of those rare authors who not only can make you fall in love with a locale but also compel you to jump into an automobile for a road trip to check it out for yourself. Sokoloff additionally provides MacDonald with a potential romantic interest in the form of fellow professor Brendan Cody, a burning flame that MacDonald flits around without being singed.

Which brings us to the second third of THE UNSEEN. The research of the professorial pair uncovers something referred to as the Folger House, a bizarre, long-abandoned structure that is not one house, but three joined together in the North Carolina countryside. Something happened in the Folger House that has been hidden in the mists of time, involving death, insanity, disappearances and, at the heart of it all, the apparent manifestation of a poltergeist. MacDonald and Cody, with a couple of oversexed and immature graduate students who have scored well above average in ESP testing, move into Folger House hoping to awaken whatever, or whoever, is within, in order to prove, once and for all, the existence of poltergeist activity.

This brings us to the final third of THE UNSEEN, and the seduction. Folger House reveals its secrets slowly and with some reluctance at first, but the manifestations come fast and furiously. That quartet is in terrible danger, and from more than one source. By the time all that can be revealed is revealed, Sokoloff has provided a new and interesting twist to the genre, one that will stay with the reader long after the book has been read.

Sokoloff is a quiet, understated master of the art of taking short, almost toss-off scenes and making them unforgettable. She performs this magic a number of times here: not to reveal anything, but one vignette involves silverware, another footprints, and yet another a puddle of water. The hair on the back of my neck may never lay down. The footprint scene, in particular, is understated, yet in its own way is as frightening as the encounter with the twin girls in the hallway of the Overlook Hotel in THE SHINING. If you are unfamiliar with Sokoloff's work, THE UNSEEN is a great place to begin.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Sokoloff returns to the phenomenon of the poltergeist in The Unseen, once again exploring ideas she began to develop in her debut novel, 2006's The Harrowing, the story of five troubled college students who summon an entity via an Ouija board. This time out, she uses psychology and parapsychology to approach her subject, focusing on one Laurel MacDonald, a Duke University psychology professor who, intrigued by the presence of hundreds of boxes of neglected records, begins to delve into the research done from 1927 through 1965 in the University's Rhine parapsychology lab. Merely curious at first, she becomes obsessed with the files, zeroing in on one case in particular, which may very well be the reason the lab was so abruptly shut down in the mid sixties.

The case in question involves the mansion known as the Folger House, which, through tantalizing mentions in reports and newspaper articles, Laurel determines was the site of a great calamity, resulting in the death and institutionalization of several members of a team from the Rhine labs, one of whom may have been her seemingly simple Uncle Morgan, who was matriculating at Duke at the time. The theory she pieces together is that the team, consisting mainly of members who showed above average talent in ESP-related experiments, somehow triggered the house's latent energy, resulting in tragedy. Motivated by both personal and financial considerations, Laurel and a colleague decide to try to recreate the experiment, with predictable results.

The Unseen is a well researched, well constructed, well written, well thought out ghost story/southern gothic that, well, just doesn't achieve its full potential. One reason is that if you're at all familiar with the genre, you've seen things just like this before, from, among others, Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House), Richard Matheson (Hell House), and Stephen King (Rose Red), and that familiarity lessens the impact of what Sokoloff offers up, despite her canny and fresh use of the Rhine lab experiments as a springboard. Another factor is that the idea of the haunted house/spooky locale has become so firmly entrenched in modern culture that even Verizon Wireless is exploiting the trope, in its humorous and seemingly endless "Dead Zone" commercials, which so effectively send up all the clichés we've become so inured to over the years. So, when Laurel sees a mysterious figure in the distance, it's less ominous than it used to be; instead of suggesting menace, you almost expect his appearance to harbinger a lack of bars on her cell phone.

Again, this is not to say that this isn't a good read, it certainly is, it's just that it's better suited to folks who haven't seen this kind of thing before. Understanding that, it's a perfectly readable, scary, and credible piece of entertainment--Sokoloff shines, and deserves kudos for her crisp, direct style, excellent characterization, and for weaving the real life history of the Duke Rhine lab into her own fictional landscape.

After a traumatic end to a relationship, Laurel MacDonald accepts a job as a psychology professor at Duke University and makes the move from sunny California. Upon her arrival, she learns that in order to maintain her tenure at the University, she needs to get published. She uncovers a fifty year old study done by the Rhine psychology lab, a study on extrasensory perception that mysteriously went dormant. This study took place at the Folger House, a century-old home known for its supernatural activity. Participants in this survey either disappeared, went insane, or suffered other emotional/mental effects. Laurel learns that her uncle, once bright and outgoing, wiht a great future ahead of him, was a participant in this study. He's now a shell of a man with apparent mental defeciencies. Joined by Brendan Cody, another psychology professor, they find the Folger House and begin to recreate the infamous study with a new set of student participants. When they arrive at the house, it's not long before they begin to experience supernatural activity. Mysterious noises, odd feelings, only begin to explain the activity the team experience.

Sokoloff once again does a stellar job with this one! The reader becomes entranced within the first few pages. Throughout the entire book, my spine tingled with anticipation. Laurel's character is extremely well developed. The reader uncovers more about her with every turned page. The secondary characters, while not extremely developed, do add a great deal to the story. The are both seriously flawed and it's hard to like them, but that adds to the overall atmosphere of the book. Highly highly recommended book, to any fan of ghosts stories, tales of extrasensory perception or the like.

Contains: mild sex and language