Horror Book Preview: Deadly Occupants by Mads Rafferty. Read or Skip?

 

A haunted house tour should be fun and spooky, right? But in the case of these four friends, the haunted house tour takes a far more frightening turn. 

Mads Rafferty’s Deadly Occupants is just the book you want to read during the spooky month. 

Released in September 2024, the book is still in the bestsellers list and has amassed generally positive reviews. 

DEADLY OCCUPANTS Plot Summary

Blair and her friends Evie, Phoebe and Violet decide to go on a haunted house tour on a Halloween night when a terrifying event occurs, leaving all four friends shaken. 

However, soon after, their own house appears to be haunted, making them question if they are all alone here? As the paranormal activity intensifies, Blair realizes that the house is not the only thing haunting her. It is also her past. 

Blair must now solve the mystery or risk succumbing to the same fate. 

DEADLY OCCUPANTS Preview and My Take

The book opens with an adrenaline pumping moment as Blair runs out of the house. She has just felt the touch of a man and is panicking when she runs into Phoebe, one of her friends. 

Sally, the tour guide is mystified as it was only supposed to be her and Blair and her three friends. 

Sally goes to check while Blair’s friends are skeptical of what she experienced. In fact, her friend Evie is a little too enthusiastic about haunted houses to care about what Blair has gone through. 

You almost feel kind of bad for Blair who keeps saying that she felt someone practically grope her while her friends dismiss her obvious distress. 

We see peer pressure in full form as Blair is forced to enter the house again and partake in the fun of visiting a spooky house. It did take seven months to make a booking after all, as claimed by her friend. 

More spooky things happen, like a man’s voice calling out to Blair on the speakers which gets her on edge. Finally, the friends decide to send Blair up the attic for some good ol’ fun. We don’t get all the details of what Blair actually sees, but find out that whatever it is, causes her to almost have a nervous breakdown. 

Her friends are sort of apologetic and the next time we see them, they are in school and Blair is waiting outside Phoebe’s class to deliver her assignment which she had accidentally left at home. Blair is still sporting the claw marks of the creature she encountered at the house, and is absently rubbing at them through her clothes when the most handsomest boy in the school notices her and makes a funny remark. 

Blair blushes and practically swoons. He immediately asks her for a date and Blair immediately says yes. Let’s not waste any time here. 

She then finds out his name is Xavier and he is the handsomest (yes, it needs to be repeated) boy in school and guess what? He’s the nicest as well. All the girls are swooning over him, but he only has eyes for Blair. 

Something is clearly fishy about the guy. No one is that flawless. 

Anyway, Blair also has a tragic backstory where she has lost her parents and sister. We don’t get to find out in the preview of what exactly happened to them. 

In the next scene, Blair and her friends are having a horror movie night, where they unanimously choose Scream because Jenna Ortega is in it. They all order pizzas and get into their pajamas. Blair gets into her spooky pajamas, the ones gifted to her by her friends. She will do anything to make her friends happy, because they are all the family she has left. 

As luck would have it, during the movie’s most pivotal scenes, the lights go off, and so do the candles. The lights going off makes sense. But what made the candles blow out?

READ OR SKIP?

Deadly Occupants is an interesting Young Adult Thriller. It focuses heavily on friendships and crushes and school, while hinting at a pretty engrossing mystery. 

Yes, there are clichés, but the mystery may just be the USP that can change your opinion. 

It is also interesting to see the protagonist not having it all together and how she sort of has this insecurity to please her friends, even going ahead and doing what scares her just to make them happy. It’s peer pressure at its finest and we get to see a protagonist experiencing it. 

This is a READ for me mainly because it gives off  FEAR STREET vibes and partly because I am intrigued with Blair’s character. 

You can check out the book for yourself here