Book Review: His Happy Place

Title: His Happy Place
Author: Zakiya Dalila Harris
Genre: Thriller, Horror, Mystery

What It’s About: Ama sets the the cabin on fire, with her boyfriend sleeping in it, before she gets in the car and drives away.

Ama, a black writer, crosses path with Nathan, a strait-laced Korean investment banker, at a cafe in New York City where they both live. They have been dating for four months, and Ama’s friend, Corie, tells her that he is boring; not for her. But Ama doesn’t listen, choosing to stay with him because she finds him interesting, and continues to tell Corie that Nathan doesn’t want to reveal all parts of himself right away, as some people take a while to warm up to others.

Nathan takes Ama to his happy place, a Cabin four hours away from New York City (they made it in three hours, a fact that Nathan is proud of), and at first Ama begins to panic because she sees an outhouse, and doesn’t think that she can handle that, though she does remind herself that she’s here because of Nathan, and wants to be with him. He carries her into the house, which he built by himself, and she finds that it is very cozy. She asks about one of the pictures of him on the wall, with a vibrant sunset, and he tells her that it was taken in New Zealand, with his ex-wife. Apparently she had loved it in New Zealand so much, that she ended up staying, and sent him the divorce papers from there. He hadn’t seen her since. Ama also asks about a “knife” and Nathan corrects her that it is actually a Machete. His father had taken him hunting as a boy and he hated hunting with the machete, but then got better at it. Nathan also admits that he hasn’t been in the cabin for over two years.

They spend a blissful day hiking and cooking, before going to sleep. Ama wakes up in the middle of the night, feeling a bit hot, but knows that Nathan had checked the door and windows to make sure that it was safe. She feels her way around the house to the bathroom, but finds that things are not where they are supposed to be. While she’s in the restroom, she starts humming one of the songs that Nathan played for her on the vinyl, and suddenly, she hears that same song playing in the room. She figures that Nathan woke up, heard her humming the song, and went to play the song for her, but when she walks into the bedroom, she finds Nathan still sleeping. She gets scared, and tentatively heads out into the living room, where she finds the fireplace roaring, the music playing, and then she comes upon bloodied clothing on the floor–clothing that belongs to a woman, which result her own hands and clothing to get bloodied. She then realizes that the thing that is burning in the fireplaces is more clothing. Suddenly, the light flickers on, and the images disappear–her hands and clothing is clean. Ama grabs a glass of water, drinks it, and starts heading back to the bedroom, when she glances upon the picture of Nathan from New Zealand…except now there’s a blonde-haired woman next to him, which she determines is Lauren, Nathan’s ex-wife. She hears a voice “Save Yourself, Ama.”

Ama wakes up the next morning, finding herself on the couch, and Nathan bustling about the kitchen. He tells her that he found her unconscious on the floor of the kitchen, and moved her to the living room. At first, Ama is hesitant to tell him anything, and mostly because she doesn’t remember what had happened to her that night. But she glances up on the photo and sees that Nathan is alone in the image. The two of them spend another wonderful day in the cabin and nature, and that night Ama goes to sleep, making sure to drink less wine, in case that is what caused the hallucinations the night before. Once again, she is woken in the middle of the night, but this time, it’s because it’s way too hot in the bedroom, and she’s coated in sweat, down to her box braids. She comes out into the living room, but this time, it’s like the room no longer exists, and she keeps on walking and walking until she finds herself in another enclosed place, where she finds Lauren splayed out on the floor, looking like she’s asleep, except that she’s not asleep. Once again, she hears a voice, and this time starts screaming, which is when Nathan comes out, and Ama finds herself in the house again. She tells him that she’s been having a nightmare, and mentions the fireplace, but doesn’t tell him about the body or the blood. Nathan tells her that Lauren also used to hear voices, and say that there are things that happened to his father, as she wanted to find out what happened to him. Ama then asks to leave, but Nathan tells her that they should stay the night and leave the following day. He gives her some sleeping pills and they got to sleep.

The next morning Ama pretends that she slept well (as she stayed up all night, hiding the sleeping pills that she received from him) and tells Nathan about a “dream” that she had–basically recounting the events from the night before as a dream. Nathan suddenly perks up and looks more chipper after having been downtrodden because he probably didn’t want to have a conversation with Ama about the evening before. Ama then asks Nathan to grab some milk from the fridge for her coffee, before putting the sleeping pills into his mug of coffee, which in turn makes him sleepy. So she heads out for a walk on her own, while he stays at home to work on some items for work, with the promise that they will meet up at the lake later. As Ama walks, she tries to find cell signal, because she needs to find out what happened to Lauren. She finds some service and is able get messages from Corie, but isn’t able to send her a message requesting for Corie to pick her up. When she has some service again, Ama looks up Lauren Davis from Columbia University. At first, she doesn’t know if she’s found the right person, because the name is very common, but then she finds the article on Lauren Davis that says she disappeared in New Zealand, and has never been found.

Because of that, Ama heads back to the cabin, and a voice takes over for her, telling her to go check out the other building by the cabin, where Ama finds the red jerrycan. Then she hears the voice telling her to burn the cabin down.

My thoughts: The story does start with good suspense, but boy is it disappointing. I particularly dislike these short stories full of the character jumping to conclusions and having zero communication with the others, which is exactly what this was. Instead of waiting to get back into the City, to relative safety, Ama decides to jump to conclusions that Nathan killed his wife and potentially his father with the machete, so she listens to the voices in her head telling her to burn the cabin down. It just plays into this idea of the dumb girl who is helpless, and crazy because she hears voices that tell her to do things. I honestly wouldn’t recommend this short story to read on your own time if you can help it as it’s not very interesting to read, just a lot of non-sensical pieces of information put together to make some kind of plot. Unchartered was a much better read in the Getaway series than this book, so I would recommend that one for sure.