Rating: 
Summary: Just painful.
Review: A young couple moves into a house with a grisly past. One of them is aware of this; the other is oblivious until she begins to see horrific images in the basement. The novel belabors this situation for about three quarters of the way, after which the plot takes a serious left turn that everyone but the protagonist can see coming. Girón throws in a lot of weirdness for weirdness' sake, such as a man who can remove his skin to feed his company of wolves, but none of it is ever justified. It all leads up to a climax where the ultimate villain of the book is defeated by someone throwing a stick at it. Really.The prose is terrible, as is the dialogue. Nobody uses contractions so they all sound like robots at one time or another. Where was the editor? Perhaps he or she didn't think it worth the trouble. Leisure has published some great work that you won't want to miss. This isn't one of them
Rating:
Summary: The House of Plain
Review: Despite the eye catching cover photo and the info I received from the back cover I was real disappointed in this book. I came on amazon to read other reviews about it to see maybe it was just me that had a problem with it. But I was surprised to see a lot of negative things about it. I think this book had potential to be better. There was only one part that lasted about 2 chapters that really had my interest. The book was choppy and sometimes the flashbacks kind of got to be too much. I still give it one star, whether or not I could give 0. I only wish I could give 0 stars to those that I really hate and don't even finish. So the 1 star is for actually finishing it.
Rating:
Summary: Nearly unreadable
Review: I generally don't like to review bad books but a spate of them have been coming out from one of the main paperback sources of horror: Leisure Books. Despite their publishing wonderful authors like Doug Clegg, Tom Piccirilli, Simon Clark, and Graham Masterton, they've also managed to absolutely embarrass themselves by publishing some very poor choices. This is one of them. Sephera Giron's House of Pain isn't merely bad, it's the publishing world's answer to moviedom's Plan 9 From Outer Space. I was literally in pain trying to endure my way through this one. The narrative voice is weak, the story line tepid, the charcters cardboard, and yet I sense that the author has a real passion in her love for writing. All the more sad, really.
I'm trying to find one thing nice to say about the book, but I'm at a complete loss. Nothing in it works at all, and it pains me to say that. I see that Ms. Giron has another novel published by Leisure entitled The Birds and the Bees. I need to recover from this one for quite a long time before I'll be able to force myself to pick up another of her books. Shame on Leisure for bringing out both the best and the absolute worst to be found in the field.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun read
Review: I liked this book but then I like most of Sephera Giron's books and think they are a fun read. The book has some interesting concepts and some terrifying scenes in it that really disturbed me. I liked the ending of the book as well, it reminded of the excellent endings some of the books Ive read by Richard Laymon who I consider to be one of the best writers in the field. I dont know why people are giving her such bad reviews but I would definitely disagree with them but then again its a matter of personal taste so they're opinions are just as valid as what I have to say. Nuff said...
Rating:
Summary: Fun read
Review: I liked this book but then I like most of Sephera Giron's books and think they are a fun read. The book has some interesting concepts and some terrifying scenes in it that really disturbed me. I liked the ending of the book as well, it reminded of the excellent endings some of the books Ive read by Richard Laymon who I consider to be one of the best writers in the field. I dont know why people are giving her such bad reviews but I would definitely disagree with them but then again its a matter of personal taste so they're opinions are just as valid as what I have to say. Nuff said...
Rating:
Summary: What a waste
Review: Interesting if not terribly original idea badly executed. Other people have commented on the larger issues of plot and characterization, so I'll settle for a pet peeve: the writer has NO ear for dialogue. In particular, she doesn't contract "to be" verbs in dialogue. Over and over she wrote things like, "If it is not too much trouble," or "I heard you are a witch." Who talks like that? It's a little thing, but it threw me out of the story every time. That's an amatuerish mistake, and it almost made me wonder if English isn't her first language. Even if that's the case, though, what editor was sleeping on the job?
Rating: 
Summary: Evil is as Evil dwells
Review: Not a bad horror story. Based on the horror premise that when horrible things happen somewhere, there is left a trace. In this book, the site was a house where unspeakable acts were performed by the family living there. They were discovered and the town rose up and demolished the house. Back in present day, a boy who watched the house's destruction with his friends, now owns the land and has built a new house. But he has failed to tell his wife the history of the place or that their house has some of the original basement. Well, evil things begin to happen and the wife begins to get scared. What is going on in her house? Evidence begins to build and we get some interesting plot twists. The plot is quite good, but it suffers from being to vague at the start. It is herd to pinpoint when things begin to build, but the do get started and the book becomes pretty interesting. A good book for horror fans who like stories where evil is a force unto itself and that it can infect people.
Rating:
Summary: Evil is as Evil dwells
Review: Not a bad horror story. Based on the horror premise that when horrible things happen somewhere, there is left a trace. In this book, the site was a house where unspeakable acts were performed by the family living there. They were discovered and the town rose up and demolished the house. Back in present day, a boy who watched the house's destruction with his friends, now owns the land and has built a new house. But he has failed to tell his wife the history of the place or that their house has some of the original basement. Well, evil things begin to happen and the wife begins to get scared. What is going on in her house? Evidence begins to build and we get some interesting plot twists. The plot is quite good, but it suffers from being to vague at the start. It is herd to pinpoint when things begin to build, but the do get started and the book becomes pretty interesting. A good book for horror fans who like stories where evil is a force unto itself and that it can infect people.
Rating:
Summary: Tries, and at times succeeds.
Review: Sephera Giron, House of Pain (Leisure, 2001)
Before you read the book, just open to the back cover and stare at Ms. Giron's photo. Erm, wow.
Now that that's out of the way, on to the book itself. (But you can allow yourself to go back between chapters and stare some more.) I'm not exactly sure how to describe House of Pain. It certainly starts off with a bang, but then it kind of deflates (as if having its brain sucked out by one of the villains). The haunted-house premise is always a great one, and it's got some twists on it here that are, while not wholly original, at least not horribly overutilized enough to have appeared in, say, a Barbara Michaels novel. But by the last fifty pages or so, I was saying to myself "didn't I see this in an old Louis Gossett, Jr., movie?" way too many times. (And it wasn't a horror movie.)
Worth it for the first two-thirds of the book, but be prepared for something of a letdown. ** ½
Rating:
Summary: Really, really bad.
Review: WARNING: CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS. This book looked great--I'm always up for an "evil house" book, cliched as they may be. However, as other reviewers here have pointed out, the cover image, plot summary, and even the title of this atrocity are misleading. The multiple grammatical and proofreading errors are annoying, but not nearly as dismal as the story itself. The plot ends with a cult, in an underground cave, summoning their goddess to receive her human sacrifices. The goddess has feathers and a beak...in my mind, a giant chicken. She sucks people's brains out of their heads, which apparently makes a popping noise and causes their skulls to deflate. Really. This sounds delightfully cheesy, but unfortunately it's not even laughable. Really, really painful.
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