Jo Nesbø
La casa delle tenebre

After the tragic death of his parents in a fire, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved is sent to live with his uncles in the remote town of Ballantyne, earning a reputation among his new schoolmates as unsociable and marginalized.
So when a student named Tom disappears before his eyes, no one believes his version of the events: it was the phone booth on the edge of the woods that sucked him into the receiver, making him vanish into thin air. The only one who pays attention to him is Karen, a girl who encourages Richard to follow the clues the police refuse to investigate.
When, shortly after, another boy disappears, Richard must prove his innocence and confront the dark magic that surrounds Ballantyne and threatens its destruction.

Nesbø's novel—which is divided, both in structure and in taste, into three major chapters—starts off in the worst possible way, decidedly improving in the middle of the work only to plummet sharply in the end.
Unfortunately, what we read does not provide anything new to the imagination: the dynamics that unfold in the early pages could just as easily be set in the Hawkins of Stranger Things, as in the Ohio of Super 8. The adolescent situation of the protagonist, focused on being accepted by new companions and understood by the current crush (Karen), while hiding his strong shyness and sociopathy, alternates with macabre imagery that could have better conveyed the idea if these had been the only themes addressed by the author.

The House of Darkness is Nesbø's first work I have read, but I must admit that I was not very impressed. One can see how the writing style is typical of a bestseller, as it flows smoothly and never bores the reader. However, I found the first and third parts lacking, wondering how much more I could have appreciated the work if the story had been entirely like the second.
I give the work an average rating because, to save the characters, settings, behaviors, and dialogues from clichés, there is certainly the originality of the plot. As mentioned above, the justification of the ending seems a terrible choice by the author, as if it were hastily made to conclude the novel.