YMMV / The Intruders

• Cliché Storm: Filled with typical horror/thriller cliches, played straight at all times. Most readers didn't seem to mind.
• Funny Moments:
  • Cassie and Damon's bonding during the cinema trip is both this and heartwarming.
  Damon: Do I look like a seti?
  Cassie: You shouldn't have worn leather then.
  Damon: It's fake leather.
  Cassie: Well that's what most setis are made of.
  • Cassie says she'll adopt a new attitude towards the move. Joel gets hopeful that she starts being nice - but Cassie just says she's going to pretend they don't exist. Leading to gems like...
  "Damon doesn't exist, therefore he can't have made sandwiches."
• Iron Woobie: The haunting affects Joel worst of all, and he just tries to keep the peace and stay out of the way. He hardly ever complains, even though he has every reason to.
• Jerkass Woobie: Cassie is rude to everyone and acts like a Bratty Teenage Daughter. But she is a child of divorce and it's hard not to at least understand where she's coming from.
• Nightmare Fuel: A lot!
  • Joel's nightmares are incredibly creepy - from the perspective of a young boy being hunted throughout the house. He gets to the garden and climbs over the fence...only to get pulled back and presumably murdered. It's also implied that he had to witness his brother being killed or else leave him to die while he tried to save himself.
  • The climax of the book where a storm rages around the house, paralleling the ghosts going mad. Joel is forced to relive their final moments by proxy.
  • Joel's vision of the first murder - the two boys come home casually only to discover their mother dead in her room. Then there's the slammed door.
• The Un-Twist: The mention of Victoria Hawkins makes it rather obvious that she was the murder victim, especially after Joel finds blood in the master bedroom.