T. Marie Vandelly’s debut Theme Music promises a lot with its prologue. At just eighteen months, Dixie Wheeler is the only member of her family to survive a chilling event in the family home. One day at breakfast, her father left the kitchen, went to his shed and returned with an axe.

He rentered the kitchen, extra warm and cozy thanks to a turkey in the oven, looked upon the bewildered faces of his adoring family, and butchered them all. Well, not all, of course. I lived.

After he was done, her father slit his own throat.

Now, twenty-five years later, Dixie happens upon an advertisement announcing the sale of her family home – not that she has any real memories of it. After the death of her family, Dixie lived with her father’s sister, Celia, and her uncle, Ford, and her cousin, Leah. Now, as an adult, she cohabitates with her boyfriend, Garrett. What can it hurt to go check out the house, she wonders.

The house is “charming” in fact, despite its horrific history. Garrett falls in love with it, too, although he isn’t aware of what happened there. In fact, Dixie hasn’t been forthcoming with the details of her past at all. That’s bound to cause some friction and it does which ultimately means that Dixie moves into the house solo. Not only does she move in, but she brings with her all the household belongings that her father’s brother Davis had stored in his own basement. This includes, unfortunately, a file folder filled with crime scene photos. Davis, it seems, always believed his brother was innocent and until his death was working to prove it.

Theme Music isn’t quite sure whether it wants to be a thriller or a horror novel. Dixie’s house is haunted because of course it is, but most of the book is concerned with Dixie picking up the threads of her uncle’s investigation, and trying to figure out what really happened that day.

Books of this type depend on a likable main character, which I am sad to say, Dixie was not. Was there peril? Yes. Did she do some stupid things? Yes. Were there some twists and suspense? Also yes. But I also often found the tone uneven, sarcasm when it was uncalled for and a fair number of unbelievable plot machinations that caused a little bit of eye rolling.

All that said, Theme Music is a promising debut even if it wasn’t quite sure what kind of book it wanted to be.