Rating: 
Summary: Creepy and suspenseful
Review: A ghost story in three sections linked by the real estate agent who handles the oddly unwanted house, Moloney's third novel offers plenty of chills and suspense. The house is the main character here and not one that's ever going to be well understood, not even by its successive chosen residents: an ambitious young couple; an unhappy single mother and overweight son; an alcoholic writer.
Newly widowed Glenn Darnley meets the house on her first day back at work. It has a faintly haunted look from outside, but inside it's full of surprises - a working fireplace, a real Murphy bed, an unusual antique bathtub with big claw feet and lovely new floors and paintwork. There is a faint antiseptic smell to the yellow bedroom, but that's hardly reason enough for so many prospective buyers to reject it.
Suspense builds as the house begins to manifest - intruders in the night, faint music wafting up the stairs, doors that open and close by themselves. Moloney ("A Dry Spell") makes the heart pound as she picks up the pace with increasingly menacing, grim and eerie apparitions with strange seductive powers, closing each section with a climactic horror that puts the house on the market again.
This is a well-imagined page turner with one problem - there's no protagonist. Likable Glenn holds things together but we only see her between owners. The house is hardly sympathetic and its successive residents are not people the reader identifies with kindly. But this pretty much unavoidable flaw won't stop you from staying up well into the night, listening with one ear for sinister creaks and ghostly steps in the attic.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally, a haunted house story that delivers
Review: I have read my share of mediocre efforts into the haunted house genre, fortunatly "The Dwelling" is not one of them. This story delivers the goods; its well written, has true-to-life characters, and best of all, it's actually scary. The book almost reads like three novellas, with the common theme being the very creepy house itself. I guarantee that if you are a fan of the haunted house story you will not be disappointed. You may however think twice about that old home renovation. Light on gore and heavy on story, this novel deserves all the praise the reviewers are giving it.
Rating:
Summary: Smooth haunting
Review: I have to say that I enjoyed this book as well as all the other reviewers did. Moloney's style is tactful and liquid. I am a big fan of horror, shock, splatter and the like, but I especially like haunted house themes. Nice and creepy..........that's what I'm talking about. The kind of creep that stays with you even when you're not reading the story. The kind of creep that freaks me out when I have to shut all the lights out and go to bed and think to myself, "Now could I handle hearing something like and stay in my house?", or "I wonder what I would do if something unseen just touched me like that?"
I put myself in the characters positions and give my over imaginative mind a work out.
You know it's a good book when you can put it down and freak your own self out.
Rating:
Summary: Spectacular!
Review: I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long time. It is so well written, the story just flows out of the book and into your body. Very eerie, but not too much so. I loved it (read it in a day and a half) and would recommend it to anyone who love tales with an element of the supernatural in them. I'm going to look for and read everything else Susie Moloney has written! About time we had a Canadian author in this genre! I think I'll tell my real estate agent about it too!
Rating:
Summary: Stephen King has something to learn
Review: I purchased this book because I was interested in a horror novel written by someone from my own city. What on earth in Winnipeg is so scary that it could inspire a haunted house story? I never quite found out, but I very much enjoyed her book anyway.
Susie Maloney's prose is lovely and subdued, with the air of patient maturity (unlike many horror writers who are over-the-top. You can practically see them prancing around after an attempt at a frightening scene, wide-eyed and expectant, asking "did I scare you? Huh? Be honest!"). I was taken aback by the frequent comparisons of her to Stephen King. She writes nothing like him! His works are desperate attempts to "shock" with overt images of his all time favorite trash-gore: grey matter and bits of skull, broken ribs, axes, etc. It's tiresome. Then he throws in some racy sex scene that does nothing but make your skin crawl. Yes, yes, terror and sexual stimulation are hormonally linked, but please don't be so desperate!
No, Susie Maloney is clean, sophisticated, and concise. Her writing is not an 800 page rant (unlike this review), but refreshing and mature. Her characters are realistic and vulnerable, which, of course, are necessary for her portrayal of the power of the house. It's a quick read, with a suitable ending. Not once did I roll my eyes.
Rating: 
Summary: Great premise, falters towards the end
Review: I read this book after finding it in a bookshelf at work. The book starts out great. The story is compelling, and the house is downright spooky. However, most of the scary details of the house are spelled out in the first half of the book. The entire second half is interesting, but not particularly scary, since by that time, you already know everything there is to know about the house. Also, one thing that bugged me is that there are very few likable characters. As a result, the suspense is lessened because you don't particualarly care if anything happens to them. The plot was intriguing, and I was spurred on to finish, even after things had bogged down a bit. Overall, the style was good, and though it does become significantly tamer towards the end, it is still a good read to find out what happens.
Rating:
Summary: Great premise, falters towards the end
Review: I read this book after finding it in a bookshelf at work. The book starts out great. The story is compelling, and the house is downright spooky. However, most of the scary details of the house are spelled out in the first half of the book. The entire second half is interesting, but not particularly scary, since by that time, you already know everything there is to know about the house. Also, one thing that bugged me is that there are very few likable characters. As a result, the suspense is lessened because you don't particualarly care if anything happens to them. The plot was intriguing, and I was spurred on to finish, even after things had bogged down a bit. Overall, the style was good, and though it does become significantly tamer towards the end, it is still a good read to find out what happens.
Rating:
Summary: It makes you think about the house even when......
Review: I stay up late to read this book. It is scary, very interesting, true classic "Haunted House" story. It makes you think about the house when you are not reading. Susie Moloney sure master to keep you read pages to pages till the very end.
The haunting activies in this story are pretty real to real life cases, and that makes the book so good. It makes you start wonder if you are alone in your own house.
Rating:
Summary: Only my hairdresser knew!
Review: My hairdresser passed this book on to me because she thought it was "esoteric." I almost didn't read it -- I don't like scary stories or hauntings, but this one was something special. Susie Moloney really knows how to craft a story, or in this case, four stories! The book is magnificent, worthy of Margaret Atwood or Richard Matheson. Moloney's research must have been quite extensive, as her characterizations are right on, from the most detailed nuances of practicing alcoholic behaviour to the logistics of installing an oversized bathtub. The stories are circular yet linear at the same time, and the end is decidedly satisfying, with just enough information (never too much) to allow the reader to draw her own conclusions and paint her own pictures. This book will make a great film if Hollywood or Toronto ever gets hold of it... and hopefully, they will let Moloney's novel be the framework and not kill the novel's quality with too many special effects and things that go bump in the night (remember what Hollywood did to Tryon's "The Other"?). These hauntings are smart and subtle, causing readers to ask why rather than just having the hell scared out of them. A great read and a real page-turner.
Rating: 
Summary: Started out okay
Review: The Dwelling is a different kind of haunted house story. From the very begining it's obvious that there is somehting wrong in this ordinary suburban home. It's inhabited by ghosts and seems to have a mind of its own as well. Three families, all with desperate problems, buy it one after another and the house deals with them. The first and most interesting are a young married couple; Becca and Dan. Becca is too snooty, cold and hard and her talented,dreamy husband is too soft. The house dislikes Becca but wants to play awhile with her husband. The second family consists of a miserable woman and her even more miserable 8 year old son. The house and several of it's ghosts offers them a solution but it's one that most of us would probably reject. The final family consists of Richie and his son. Richie is a talented writer who can't go one hour without a drink and is rapidly turning into a mean drunk. Something in the attic reaches out to Richie and something in him reaches out to it. Laced in between the adventures of the happy homeowners is the story of Glenn, the sensible, sane and newly widowed realtor who sells the house to all these people. She likes the house and can't understand why it seems to have so much bad luck. The Dwelling is not a gobs of grue type of horror novel. If you grew up on Uncle Stephen King or delight in Poppy Brite this is not the book for you. It's a cool, intellectual type of horror that belongs more to the Shirley Jackson school. Terrible things happen in this book but they are written up in such a subtle way that you may need to go back a re-read certain sections to figure out what just happened. You don't see the bogey man in the closet but you do feel his breath on your neck in the dark. You don't get a pages long description of the ghoul under the bed but you know he's there waiting to caress your foot if you let it stick out from under the covers. It's that type of book.
I liked it and I really appreciated the non ambiguous ending.
My only nitpick--and it's a tiny one is the use of the elderly neighbor. She appears for a deliciously spooky scene and is abruptly withdrawn. I got the feeling that she has a bigger part in the story but it was edited out except for this one brilliant scene.
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