I have to admit I'm a sucker for these sorts of premises. A diary is found and authenticated, and it supposedly belonged to a young woman who lived in a sprawling, haunted mansion. Even knowing that it's fiction, the presentation adds to the illusion. If well done, it suspends my disbelief deeply enough that I catch myself thinking, "Oh, I should go look up ____ and see if it's real." I love that feeling and did get it a few times with this book. 
 Overall, I enjoyed the writing and found the story to be compelling. It was solidly a 4-star book until about 1/3 of the way through and then it began to disappoint. I'll be more specific behind the spoiler tag below, but suffice to say it chose one of the worst tropes ever to explain the haunting of Rose Red. Every time it was mentioned, my heart sank, because I otherwise enjoyed the book. For the other issue, I am apparently to blame the fictional "editor" who studied the diary before embarking upon her own research of Rose Red. 
 (view spoiler)[Indian burial ground? Really? So lame. 
 I ended up not minding the idea that repetitive entries were been removed by the fictional editor. I did mind, however, the Bowdlerizing of the sexual encounters with her maid near the end of the story. Why not include them in some form, even coyly written? Ellen's sexuality and the tension surrounding it was an arc all its own, so it felt like a total a cop out for the "editor" to say, "This was too smutty for print." 
 The editorial comments did mention a website where I could go read the smutty parts, but the site doesn't exist (anymore, if it ever did). If they'd wanted to leave the debaucherous sex to my imagination, I'd rather it had said the pages had been torn or blacked out out or something. After I finished the book, I read that this was meant as a tie-in for the Stephen King mini-series Rose Red (which I did not see, though I thought it sounded familiar!) and this is apparently a prequel. If there ever was a website for it (with or without smut), I suppose it's no longer needed. Therein lies the peril of the internet elements of the tie-in... (hide spoiler)]