Audrey's Door

Langan's lackluster third horror novel follows emotionally stunted, mentally ill Audrey Lucas as she moves into the Breviary, which seems the perfect Manhattan home for an up-and-coming architect. Rent is cheap; the building's Chaotic Naturalism architecture is rare and intriguing; and it lets Audrey get away from her troubled first romance. After learning that the apartment's last occupant drowned her four children before committing suicide, Audrey still opts to stay, but as apparitions and the building's other residents urge her to “build a door,” her sanity begins to slip. What follows is a slow, uninteresting story full of dead-end digressions, with nothing to keep a reader engaged. Langan (The Missing ) knows how to write strong prose, but the story lacks punch and likely won't even appeal to fans of haunted houses. (Oct.)