Playing Through Every Choices Book, In Order (Part 35: The Haunting of Braidwood Manor)

Hey! Today we attempt to deal with the horrifying visions of our dead brother by...entering a haunted mansion by ourselves?

Next time, we attempt to steal the crown jewels of Monaco in an epic heist fueled by revenge!

Link to previous reviews: https://www.reddit.com/user/stresseatingdog/comments/sj3s3m/all_choices_reviews_megapost/

SPOILER WARNING, AS ALWAYS!

The Haunting of Braidwood Manor

M/C: Stella

Final LI: N/A

Favorite Chapter: Chapter 6

Favorite Character(s): Eleanor, Simon, Thomas, Clarissa

Least Favorite Character(s): Rose

Overall Rating: 8/10

Review:

One of the shortest books on the app, but that honestly works here. This book doesn’t attempt to tell a long, detailed story. Rather, it is a tiny portrait of how M/C’s guilt over her brother and Eleanor’s guilt over her mother both create horrifying manifestations. The story is pretty well done, at least in my opinion. Rose is a nice villain, and it's easy to see why Eleanor kept the secret from her siblings as long as she did. The children themselves are all quite likable, and it's tragic to think about how viciously their lives were snuffed out by their impatient, cowardly mother. I do have a few critiques for this book. Firstly, I really don’t get the genderlock. Eleanor isn’t a confirmed lesbian, is she? The story would work just fine with a male M/C, but hey, this book was extremely early on in Choices history, so I guess that’s why. Plus, with it being so short, maybe Pixelberry just didn’t want to go to the effort of creating male M/C sprites and specific dialogue. A second critique I have would have to be the LI’s. I think this book did not need LI’s, and Victor especially felt completely unnecessary as a character. Eleanor works fine, I suppose, as she is integral to the story, but Victor is useless. He’s just there to satiate any straight/bi women players who wanted a male LI in this six chapter book. A final critique I had is the ending, specifically the whole “Eleanor can live again” thing. I thought that completely defeated the point of the story, which was that M/C’s brother and Rose, Eleanor, and the children were trapped in time because of a fear of moving on and letting things go. So why, pray tell, can we opt to let Eleanor live again? Why don’t Simon, Clarissa, or Thomas get to live again? It’s just not fair to them, or M/C’s brother for that matter, that Eleanor can live again by some unexplained magic. For this reason, I chose to let her pass on in my playthrough. I also did not choose either LI in the end, due to what I stated above. All in all, this book was a hauntingly poignant short story, and despite its flaws, I think it still fully accomplished what it was trying to do.