The Doll's House

A Short Story

By: Lisa Unger

Narrated by: Mia Barron, Kimberly Woods

Length: 2 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

A widowed mother, ready to give love another chance, moves into her fiancé’s old family home with her teenage daughter. But as they try to build a future together, the past refuses to let go in this haunting short story from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger.

When Jules first meets the handsome artist Kirin, she’s still mourning her husband’s death, but a fairytale romance soon sweeps her off her feet. Now she and her daughter Scout are moving out of the city and into Kirin’s once-lonely mansion. He’s thoughtfully updated and adapted the home to match their personalities. But Scout is determined to keep her father’s memory alive by rejecting the new life her mother and Kirin have spun for her.

Scout’s sullenness begins to fade, though, when she finds a beautiful handmade doll in one of the many empty rooms in the house. Kirin says that the doll belonged to his late sister and he’d like Scout to have it. Scout’s hopeful for a connection over their shared grief, but as she grows more curious about Kirin’s sister, she can’t escape the feeling that a danger lurks in the house…and its gaze is fixed on her mother.

©2024 by Lisa Unger. (P)2024 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

The storyline

The performance was engaging. The characters were well thought out. The storyline was twisty and mysterious. The ending was well wrapped up.

Perfect fall suspense!

Loved this creepy thriller! Giving old school, vintage Goosebumps vibes. Perfect to get inn the mood for spooky season!

Meh

it was just ok. a very predictable quick read. The audio ok, there was a part at when the Jules was a little to breathy for my liking, but other than that it was just ok to me.

Nice mystery

Short and enjoyable. Good characters and nice performance. Nice to have a short story to listen to.

Quick read

It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. Quick read though. Kept my interest. Fast pace character story

Disappointing

Usually enjoy Lisa Unger but not this time. The best part of The Doll’s House was the length.

Loved it and would've loved more!

I believe the most difficult thing to do with a novella is tell a story that feels complete. In The Doll's House, Lisa Unger achieved this in a minimal amount of pages. Told in dual POV from a widowed mother and her daughter, this story gives you characters that you connect with and feel for. You feel their past and you understand their present.

Set in a creepy family estate outside of the city, The Doll's House has Scout and her mother Jules going to live with Jules' new fiancé Kirin, who is a pretty famous doll maker. Their world gets turned upside down from the death of Scout's father to the new man in Jules life. Everyone has a past, but some are a bit more troubled than others.

I really liked the creepy setting and the whole vibe of this short novella. I was immediately drawn to Scout and felt for this teen that was ripped away from everything she knew to come live in a "smart house" world. But nothing sat right for her. And with good reason. The whole vibe of this story was on point and I really enjoyed it. I would've loved to have heard more about the past and even gotten more of "after the fact", but I didn't feel as if I was missing anything. Great characters and good build up of an intense ending. Both narrators were great and captured the two female characters emotions throughout. Perfect read/listen for SpookTober.

I want the full book

This was a great idea but felt we missed a lot with its length and could be developed into an amazing full book.

Spooky

Scout and her widowed mother, Jules, move away from Manhattan to a secluded mansion upstate when Jules becomes engaged to Kirin. Kirin is a wealthy artist who is renowned for his intricate puppets and dolls, used in movies and collected around the world. Although the house is beautiful and state-of-the-art, there’s an air of menace about the place, heightened by the ghostly appearance of a young woman, who seems to resemble the doll Kirin made in memory of his dead sister, Emma. This is a short story, but there’s a lot of plot and atmosphere in its relatively few number of pages.

A tiny tome with a towering impact

It’s a quick read, but the characters felt decently developed. Great ending as well. The writing was good, but I wish there was a clear distinction in the sections where characters were texting one another.