You can find The Agony House here on Amazon or here on Book Depository. I started the book looking forward to these portions, but ended up just disappointed and confused.
The answer was no the illustrated sections offer nothing conducive to the overall plot. After finishing The Agony House, I went through and read only the blue-tinted illustrations to see whether or not they made a cohesive story on their own. The pages of paneled comic book within the novel were also a bit of a let-down. The supposedly complex “mystery” at the center of the plot is oddly disjointed, long sections would pass where no one seemed to be working to solve it. In general I find that when a book scatters itself over several genres, it ultimately spreads too thin and ends up as none of them. It is part teenage adventure story, part cultural admonition on gender inclusivity. It is part mystery novel, part ghost story. Unfortunately, The Agony House can’t decide what kind of book it wants to be.
Not to mention the artwork by Tara O’Connor which I thought would offer a unique parallel to the main plot. It has everything going for it: spooky house, plucky heroine, the cultural heritage of New Orleans. I really, really wanted to like this book. Nestled at random intervals throughout the novel are snippets of a mysterious comic book which may provide clues as to the identity of the spirit haunting the house on Argonne Street.
It turns out that Cherie Priest’s novel isn’t a traditional paneled graphic novel instead, the primary narrative is written in standard prose, following Denise as she had her family attempt to unravel the riddle surrounding their new home. Graphic novels are among my very favorite type of book, and when I heard about The Agony House, set in a derelict New Orleans house in a community still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, I got excited. Denise isn’t budging from her new home, so she must unravel the mystery-on the pages and off-if she and her family are to survive. But when floors collapse, deadly objects rain down, and she hears creepy voices, it’s clear to Denise that something more sinister lurks hidden here.Answers may lie in an old comic book Denise finds concealed in the attic: the lost, final project of a famous artist who disappeared in the 1950s. The unexplained noises are a little more out of the ordinary, but again, nothing too unusual. They left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and have finally returned, wagering the last of their family’s money on fixing up an old, rundown house and converting it to a bed and breakfast.Nothing seems to work around the place, which doesn’t seem too weird to Denise. Denise Farber has just moved back to New Orleans with her mom and step-dad.
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