When I book a stay with AirBnB, I have two immediate filters: Homes and Superhosts. The first means that you have the whole place to yourself. No private rooms with “shared spaces” for me. I’m not sharing a bathroom, living room, and kitchen with a complete stranger who may or may not be a psychopath. The second guarantees AirBnB’s most highly rated and experienced hosts. I have seen enough TikToks about stays being cancelled the day of arrival or the AirBnB not being an AirBnB at all that I figure a Superhost at least will avoid that.

AirBnB launched in 2008, but I didn’t book my first stay until 2022. I hesitated to try AirBnB until my step-daughter and her family booked one near our home when they came to visit. When I saw what a nice place they had, I decided to try it myself.

Summer of 2022, Corinne attended a leadership/theater program at Fordham University in New York (This One Time at Summer Camp….). She had never spent a week and a half away from home before, so she was a little nervous about being that far away for that long. We have family in Queens, but she was going to be in The Bronx. I also planned to work during the week, so staying with my in-laws didn’t make much sense. And hotels in New York for a week and a half would cost a pretty penny…plus I would have to eat out every meal.

I decided to look into AirBnB. I found a cute little basement apartment in The Bronx, pet-friendly, just a few miles from Fordham. The Superhost laid out everything in the listing, including the fact that it was a basement apartment in a family home, they had children and a dog, so there would be some noise in the evenings. A lockbox contained the key for the private entrance, and access to the house proper was locked from the inside.

It was perfect. I met the host and spent a couple of evenings out on the steps talking with her while my dog was outside. She had a toddler son who was absolutely adorable, and her mom lived across the street. And it cost me a lot less than a hotel would have cost for the nine nights I was there. My first AirBnB experience was a success.

When we planned a trip to Oklahoma to visit Corinne’s roommate from the Fordham program, we booked an AirBnB again. Our flight to Oklahoma was ridiculously delayed, so I messaged the host about restaurants that might be open for a late delivery since we would be arriving at the house around 1 a.m. She messaged back a while later and said she didn’t know of any place that would be open, but she sent me a picture of some snacks and drinks she left for us so we would have something to eat when we arrived.

The two-bedroom house cost about the same as a hotel, but it was roomier, cozier, and Corinne loved the stray cats that visited the porch each morning. 🐈‍⬛🐈 AirBnB success story number two.

Our latest experience with AirBnB, I talked about just recently in Swapping One Washington for Another. A last-minute trip change from Washington state to Washington, D.C., necessitated a quick search for somewhere to stay the very next day for a week. This one definitely cost us a little more than we would have paid at a hotel in the same area but way less than we would have paid for a hotel in D.C. proper.

It was a gorgeous two-story plantation-style home with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an amazing step-down living room. All in, it cost us less than the Amtrak tickets, the hotel in Seattle, the rental car, and the AirBnB in Yakima. We spent more on souvenirs because…well D.C., but we had an awesome time and made amazing memories. Honestly, it was totally worth it. Success story number three.

I don’t know when our next AirBnB excursion will be, but I can tell you that it won’t be just a private room in someone’s home that I have to share with other guests or the homeowners. No way. Not happening. I am not that trusting…for good reason. 😉

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Book Review

⭐⭐
2 Stars for You Shouldn’t Have Come Here by Jeneva Rose

285 pages
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Publication Date: April 25, 2023
The Creepy Book Club selection for May 2023, purchased on Amazon.

Publisher’s Description

You’ve opened up your house and your heart to a total stranger … What could possibly go wrong?

Grace Evans, an overworked New Yorker looking for a total escape from her busy life, books an Airbnb on a ranch in the middle of Wyoming. When she arrives at the idyllic getaway, she’s pleased to find that the owner is a handsome man by the name of Calvin Wells—and he’s eager to introduce her to his easygoing way of life. But there are things Grace discovers that she’s not too pleased about: A lack of cell phone service. A missing woman. And a feeling that something isn’t right with the ranch.

Despite her uneasiness, the two bond and start to fall for one another. However, as her departure date nears, things change for the worse. What began as a playful romance soon turns into a complicated web of lies. Grace grows wary of Calvin as his infatuation for her seems to have morphed to obsession. Calvin fears that Grace is hiding something from him—including her reason for staying at his ranch to begin with. Vacation flings typically end in heartbreak, but for Grace and Calvin, it’ll be far more destructive.

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Main Characters:

• Grace Evans – taking a vacation from her life in New York to relax and unwind
• Calvin Wells – Wyoming ranch owner who rents a room to Grace through AirBnB

I wanted to love this book. Almost 75% of current reviews are 4 or 5 stars, so I am definitely in the minority here. The description sounded intriguing, especially since AirBnB is so popular now. And I wanted to love it for the Creepy Book Club Zoom calls this month. I went with two stars because of a decent twist at the end, but by the time I reached the end, I honestly wasn’t invested any longer. I don’t think I’ll be reading this particular author again unless the Zoom calls convince me that I judged too hard.

The point of view alternates between Grace and Calvin, so the reader at least gets to hear how each one feels during Grace’s stay. Some thrillers work better with a single point of view because the lack of an alternate perspective adds to the mystery. I think this one might have been better with Grace’s point of view mainly at the beginning and the end with a few chapters scattered throughout. Some plot elements are revealed when Grace is alone, so the reader needs her chapters, but there were a lot of things that felt so incredibly unbelievable (spoilers below).

The gist of the story is that Grace throws a dart at a map every year to select a vacation destination. She travels alone to escape her high-stress banking job in New York and spend a week and a half just reading and relaxing. This particular year, she ends up in remote Dubois, Wyoming, hosted by Calvin, who returned to Dubois a year and a half before to run his parents’ ranch after their deaths.

We start with Grace stopping for gas just outside of town. The attendant seems overly interested when she comes in to pay, and he watches her while she starts to pump her gas. When he starts to approach her, she gets creeped out, pulls the pump out of her tank, and speeds off. When she reaches Calvin’s ranch and tells him about the gas station attendant, he says, “I’ll keep you safe, Grace Evans.”

Clue number one that Calvin seems a little creepy himself. Other clues…there is no cell service, no Internet, women’s clothing in one of the drawers that he claims were an old girlfriend’s who died the year before (why wouldn’t they be in Calvin’s room?), and a padlock on the basement door. Grace is also staying in a bedroom of the house with Calvin and with no lock on the bedroom door. So the first thing I found hard to believe is that a woman traveling alone would stay in a situation like that.

Be that as it may, it’s clear Calvin and Grace feel a mutual attraction, but Calvin’s chapters talk about how it’s too soon for a relationship. He can’t stay away from Grace though. And she doesn’t do anything to hide her own attraction or to discourage Calvin. In fact, she’s kind of a tease. She decides to wear her pajamas around the house. When she asks Calvin to teach her how to fish, she makes a bet that the first one to catch a fish gets to watch the other one jump into the river naked. This is on day three of her 10-day stay!

And Grace is jealous…why I’m not sure. She literally just met this man but constantly talks about how they can’t have secrets, no more hiding things, she makes a mental note to ask him more about his past and his family. She is a guest in his house, not his girlfriend! She’s not entitled to that information.

It’s obvious that Calvin is obsessed with Grace as well, and the author makes his self-talk extremely bizarre, but if I had to read about Grace’s “blue, blue eyes” one more time…. Not kidding. There are 22 mentions of her “blue eyes,” and 16 of those are “blue, blue eyes.” We get it. They’re really blue.

Finally, the metaphors in the writing took away from the story for me because they sounded so strange.

“He was like a peach whose pit had been eaten out by insects, still supple and appealing on the outside, but no substance left on the inside.”
“Charlotte’s voice was like a knife being dragged along concrete.”
“That girl has gotten in your head like brain-eating amoeba.”

***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***

So all of the things that made me frustrated about Grace staying with Calvin were justified by the twist at the end. Grace is not Grace, which I suspected about a third of the way through when she stumbles giving a doctor her information after a fall from a horse. It feels like we’re expected to believe she has an ulterior motive for being in Dubois at Calvin’s ranch, which is why she doesn’t leave when things are going wrong. But her chapters still make it seem like she’s creeped out and may want to leave, despite her reason for being there.

At first I thought she was some relative of Calvin’s girlfriend who died or of a woman who went missing a couple weeks before her arrival. But her chapters eventually make it obvious she doesn’t know either of them. I have no idea why she sleeps with Calvin considering the ending except that she’s a sociopath, but all along we are expected to believe she’s more of a damsel in distress.

The number of times I thought to myself, “this woman is an idiot”…the ending just wasn’t worth it. I was so annoyed and frustrated that I just wanted it to be over.

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