I'm so mad. I'm so incredibly mad right now. Horror novels: how hard is it to stick the landing? This entire book was fantastic RIGHT UP UNTIL that epilogue, which undermined and undid everything the book had built up. 
 Reader expectation is an important element to be cognizant of and consider when writing a novel. What promises has your text made with the reader? What can they expect to have resolved by the end of your book? Speaking in generalities as to avoid spoilers, The Night Strangers created this wonderful sense of tension and fear on two fronts with separate characters, building up to a crescendo and clash of wills by the time we reach the finale. Characters' lives are at risk. Characters' sanity is at risk. The stakes are high, the wrongs done in the past horrific and the reader is on the edge of their seat watching this all play out. 
 And then the epilogue happens and goes "lollllllll nope. Doesn't matter bye bye now~" 
 The Night Strangers focuses around former airline pilot Chip Linton, who has the unfortunate bad luck to hit a bird while flying his plane and crash in a failed water landing, killing 39 people aboard. Understandably traumatized by this, Chip, his wife and their twin girls all move to New Hamspire into an old house that just so happens to have a weird boarded up door in the basement; a door that is boarded up with specifically 39 carriage bolts. On top of that, a group of herbalists in the town where they moved have taken up a particular interest in the Linton family, specifically with the twin daughters. Emily (the wife) finds herself dealing with a mental war on two fronts: her husband who seems to be more and more obsessed with the strange door in the basement as he slips deeper and deeper into his depression, and the strange plant women who keep forcing themselves into her and her children's lives. 
 While reading this book, I described it as "The Shining meets Rosemary's Baby." As a massive fan of both movies, this melding was amazing for me. Chip's obsession mirrors Jack's on several levels and caused me to feel the same tension and fear I get when watching that movie. Concurrently, the herbalists' obsession and strangeness mirrors that of the neighbors in Rosemary's Baby and I felt dread and fear for Emily and her family as she became more and more isolated. 
 The problem is, as mentioned, the ending. Don't read the epilogue. I'm going to try my best not to spoil anything here but if you at all hate spoilers, don't read further than this. 
 (view spoiler)[So I think what Bohjalian tried with this ending to keep with the Rosemary's Baby theme. And I don't go into my horror novels expecting a happy ending. But I do go into them expecting a tonally satisfying one. The way Rosemary's Baby ends is tonally satisfying although certainly not a happy ending. Rosemary has been isolated from her friends and family, has had her husband completely betray her in every sense, she has no one but this child now. So she chooses to raise it even though it is the son of satan/a demon because she doesn't know what else to do. The epilogue of The Night Strangers does not fit. We take our strong POV characters who have fought through this isolation and brainwashing in order to protect their children. But then we undo all of that with almost literally a wave of the hand. Evil may win in Rosemary's Baby, but you understand the events leading up to it. The way The Night Strangers plays out, this epilogue should not have happened. Let evil win, that's fine, but the specific scenario that is described in the epilogue is not how these characters would behave given what happened. (hide spoiler)] 
 I'm so angry about this. This book was going to be a 5 star new favorite and I genuinely don't think I can give it more than 3 because of this trash ending.