Book Review: IT WAS HER HOUSE FIRST

Title: It Was Her House First

Author: Cherie Priest

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press

Pages: 349

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

 

Bartholomew Sloan, a celebrity detective who never loses a case, becomes the sole heir to the home and estate of his best friend, Oscar Amundson, who was executed by the court for the murder of his wife, the silent era star Venita Rost. Venita was found dead at the bottom of a rocky overlook, supposedly murdered by Oscar. Sloan believes that she died by suicide and framed Oscar because he didn’t blame Sloan for the death of their eight-year-old daughter, Priscilla.

When Sloan enters the Amundson house after Oscar’s execution, he drinks a peg of his favourite gin, which the couple always stocked for him, and drops down dead.

In the present time, Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Mitchell, a woman with severe anxiety issues, buys the house sight unseen with the insurance money from her brother’s untimely death. Ronnie doesn’t know that Venita haunts the house, along with Sloan, the man she hated the most. Then a man comes along, Coty Deaver, Sloan’s grandnephew, with strange intentions regarding the house. Will Ronnie’s dream of a forever home come true? Or does she face danger from both the living and the dead?

 

The story is written in the past tense PoV of Sloan and Venita (in the form of a diary) in 1932, and that of Ronnie in the present time.

 

WHAT I LIKED/WHAT I DIDN’T:

I love stories set in old houses, and I was looking forward to this read. In keeping with the theme of renovation, there is a scene (and this isn’t a spoiler) where everything that Venita’s ghost touches appears restored to its full glory. I liked this extension of the theme.

I liked Venita from the diary. The mix of personal observation and dialogue was interesting.

I liked the last part of the book, when all the main characters came together, more than anything that preceded it.

I liked the writing. Here’s a sample:

On a staged performance of spinning plates, thirty might pirouette correctly—but if even one should wobble and fall, the magic is shattered and the trick has failed.

Naïve is a word that powerful people use to shut you up.

Heavy and limp, like a fortune teller’s pendulum

 

The author did a fine job with the description of the house but didn’t quite manage to create a sense of menace or dread, which was absolutely required in a haunted house story. The scenes relating to the remodeling of the house were interesting at first. But then they just went on and on. The narrative took a long time, nearly the 67 percent mark, to get to the point. The ghost story should have started playing early in the book.

 

I didn’t know what to make of Ronnie. She narrowly missed being insufferable thanks to her sense of humour. But she could have been fleshed out better. She doesn’t google the house, even though the real estate agent pointedly tells her to. She tells us about losing her brother, about feeling crushing guilt with reference to his death, but then she doesn’t give him much of a thought, except in relation to Kate, Ben’s fiancée, and Coty. While Ronnie acknowledges her loneliness in a roundabout way, the themes of grief, regret and guilt aren’t fleshed out enough, given that Venita too is grappling with grief and Sloan with guilt.

Also, while Sloan seems to keep raising the matter of Ronnie’s sexual orientation, just because of her nickname, her profession and the way she carries herself, Ronnie herself shows nothing of the kind. There’s no talk of past partners, lovers, nothing. Surprising, given that she is in her mid-forties. Not even one line saying she’s single, whether by compulsion or by choice. In fact, the first time, she meets Anne, Ronnie tells us that the woman is a lesbian plumber. That meeting is unremarkable. Days later, however, when Ronnie has to tinker with the pipes to get the water running, she tells us that she knows what to do as she had observed the “cute plumber” at work. Cute? Where did that come from? No attraction was visible at the first meeting.

The back story regarding Ben isn’t introduced organically. Ronnie tells us readers the story directly.

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:

Ronnie never reveals the insurance amount but she keeps investing in renovation and repair activities, as if the money is limitless.

 

The blurb wasn’t entirely true. For the most part, Venita’s spirit is too silent, displaying no malevolence. Nor is the house teeming with paranormal activity, so the claim that the “once-beautiful home that's claimed countless unlucky souls” is just as false. Inspector Bartholomew Sloan is referred to as Venita’s “eternal nemesis” which again makes no sense as, in the afterlife, he is quiet for the most part, exhibiting no nemesis-like actions. “And a deadly game unfolds” – again, not quite.
“Caught between a vengeful ghost and a ruthless living threat, Ronnie's scepticism crumbles. The line between living and dead isn't as sharp as it seems, and she realizes too late that in Venita's house, survival might be just an illusion.” Only half-true. The living threat was ruthless but the ghost showed no malevolence towards Ronnie.

 

The long list of items that Ronnie says can potentially scare her didn’t sound natural. It sounded like something downloaded off the Internet. And then, having mentioned this long list, suddenly Ronnie isn’t worried about anything, despite being off her medication.

 

I found it odd that both Venita and Sloan referred to Priscilla as a duckling. Twice each. Separately. In their own individual accounts, not in conversation. How strange is that! 

 

ALL SAID AND DONE: The premise of this book, with themes transcending life and death and the value of a soul, was interesting, but the execution didn’t quite do it for me. If only there had been more of Venita and Sloan and less of the home improvement show.

  

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

Book Review: THE ANGRY GHOST AND OTHER STORIES

Title: The Angry Ghost and Other Stories

Author: Peter Spokes

Publisher: Matador

Pages: 521

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

The stories in this collection contain a mix of horror tropes, including ghosts, monsters, werewolves, the walking dead etc.

The style of the writing dates the stories, setting them in the past. Each story is well told, propped up by the sense of atmospheric menace that marks a good ghost story. They give us the impression that we are safe, but only just.

Some of the stories display self-awareness of horror as a genre. A narrator in one story describes Lovecraft as his favourite author. Over and over, we also see rationalists realizing and acknowledging that ghosts exist.

1)      The Angry Ghost: Five members of the Ghost Club tell each other ghost stories that they make up. Michael, who is wheelchair bound following an accident, offers to tell a ghost story that is all too true. He claims that on a recent visit to a Cornwall village to find an unusual flower, he came to know of a ghost. A woman who jumped to her death in the icy lake on her wedding day when her beloved fiancé failed to show up for their wedding. For the last 20 years, the ghost has been haunting the lake on the anniversary of the wedding. While the basic story was something I’d heard before, here it was elevated to a tender love story.

2)      A Strange Occurrence: Four friends, a judge, a psychologist, a Cambridge physicist, and a rationalist, gather at the Archive Room of a library. Samuel, the rationalist, talks about the sighting of a ghostly hound. The hound belongs to Fr Bryan James. The previous story had a group of friends that enjoy ghost stories. Here we have friends who debunk them, preferring to believe in evidence. The tone of this story counters our scepticism, reminding us that stranger things have happened.

3)      The Ghosts of Kilronan: A rationalist, Monty, visits his birthplace at the invitation of Fr Ardal Fitzpatrick to talk about a case where a young child’s actions resulted in the death of their sister. Monty too is burdened with guilt at having caused the death of his younger sister, Rosie, when they were kids. The priest also wants him to investigate the presence of ghosts in the village.

4)      Flowers and Butterflies: was written from the PoV of an unlikely and unusual rescue worker.

5)      Happy Hallowe’en: The walking dead crew, Frank, Lucy, new boy Linus and narrator Michael, meet for a Halloween party where they compete for the best dressed character. This one was quite entertaining.

6)      A Dog Needs His Walk: A man says goodbye to his wife, and heads out for a walk with his dog, only to be struck by a realization.

7)      Back for Him: The narrator takes his grandfather, who has dementia, to an old lifeboat station from his past, to help him recuperate after an illness. There the old man is reminded of five of his friends who went out on a rescue mission during a storm and never returned. The descriptions in this story were so good, I actually visualized the scene. This story was about friendship, tenderness and old friends dearly missed.

8)      Rachel and the Beast: Rachel, a young police cadet, is out staking a criminal, a man known for brutally killing prostitutes, when the unexpected happens.

9)      The Trial of Gerald Blake: Gerald, a man who has killed several times, is led to the punishment he deserves. This story had a reference to the afterlife, but I wasn’t sure if it belonged in this collection.

10) Always April: A ghost unable to leave the cemetery in Queenstown, Ireland, tries to find out why the place has a hold on him. This story stresses that love is more powerful than death.

11) The Gift: A despotic ruler receives a gift, a living painting, from the pagans he is most cruel to.

12)      Under Isis: Ash returns home after years to avenge the murder of his parents and the burning of their home, and to find out who killed his uncle. He is no longer the boy of eleven who was afraid. Now he is a thing to be feared himself, if only he would acknowledge the truth about himself.

13)      Superheroes: This was a sweet tale about a young boy, Davey, who can’t understand why his older friends are slighting him. I loved this one.

14)      Number Eight: Nine-year-old Alex is Number Eight in an eight-member group studying rock caves as part of a tour. Afraid of monsters, she worries that she will be the first to be eaten. Midway through the tour, she needs to pee.

15)      The Museum of Fabulous Monsters: A watchman, working at the Museum of Fabulous Monsters and suffering from physical deformities himself, shows us his vulnerable side and the care he takes in ensuring that his pet is well fed. The story raises important questions about how society denies the humanity of those it sees as imperfect and hideous.

16)     Demosthenes: An investigation is initiated into the curious case of eight Greek students securing 100 percent in a plethora of subjects. Since the man who conducted the investigation, Silas Zacharias, has suddenly taken ill, his colleague, Trevor St John is asked to report the findings to a committee. St John, who has a pronounced stammer, begins to talk eloquently. How is that possible? This story was very entertaining.

17)     Just One Dear Friend: The body of Alphonse DeMara is found at the Museum, where he works, in the Hall of the Afterlife. It turns out that he had a heart attack, but Bobby, the narrator, knows that his dear friend, Alphonse, got some help from someone in the afterlife.

18)     Thick as Thieves: A security officer, Chris Gibson, connives with three thieves to steal some paintings from the place he is assigned to guard. Unfortunately for him, the plan goes awry. The paintings don’t get stolen, and the thieves end up killing one another. When Chris begins to see the ghosts of the thieves, demanding their payment, he wonders if it is because of the tumour in his head. This story was hugely entertaining.

19)     Alice and I: Fourteen-year-old twin sisters, Alice and the narrator, are playing on the branches of a tall tree when the branch snaps. The narrator breaks her sister’s fall and dies. Their parents, heartbroken, erase all evidence of her. The narrator, still haunting the house, can’t understand why. This one was poignant.

20)     Legend: Members of an ancient tribe are being ruthlessly hunted by monsters. The tribe has honour, courage and loyalty on its side. The monsters are brutal. It was only halfway through this story that I realized who the tribe is and who the monsters are.

21)     The Magic of Seagulls (As if in Her Shadow): Is she a beautiful woman or is she a seagull?

22)     The Corpse: A clever story of a murderer, who killed three young women, facing punishment. I was pleased when I guessed the identity of the narrator in the very first paragraph of the story.

23)     In Lepsa: Lowell, a former soldier and subsequent caretaker of wolves, is now a bestselling author of fantastic fiction in which the hero, named after his good friend, Ryker, battles vampires, zombies, demons and devils. Lowell is called to Lepsa to save the people from a werewolf who is terrorizing the village.

24) The Twin: A very interesting story about a dead twin, who goes about killing every person responsible for taking away his right to live.

25) That Difficult Age: A 15-year-old girl has just had an experience, her first, and is filled with anguish. We think it’s teenage hormones but it’s not.

26) Echoes of Chronus: An elderly man has a heart attack on seeing a blast from the past surface in the present.

27) Dreams and Maybe Hallucinations: A warm and tender story of a family able to pass on the gift of life thanks to a supernatural encounter.

28) Chinese Whispers: This story is written in the first person PoV of Lucifer.

29) Fire and Flames: The woods close to a village are supposed to be haunted because of a number of deaths that have occurred there. The lines between the sacred and the profane get blurred and it appears that the one has become the other. This was one of the longest stories in this book and it took its own sweet time coming to the point.

30) Let the Rats Feast: The story is written in the perspective of an unnamed narrator, who doesn’t remember who, much less what, he is. Beside him lies a wolf cub for whom he feels unexpected yet intense love.

31) Fish and Reminisce: A man has an encounter with a ghost but it isn’t quite how he thinks it is.

32) The Case of the Reverend Taplow: A reverend with a thirst for the forbidden. The story is written in the 3^rd person limited PoV of two characters. There was a fantastic twist at the end.

33) The Red Plains of Vigrior: I will not comment on this one as I don’t read fantasy.

34)  Terminus; A befitting end to this series of short stories, this story is an interesting take on the afterlife.

The stories I loved were Superheroes; Thick as Thieves; Alice and I; The Twin; Dreams and Maybe Hallucinations, and Fish and Reminisce.

The stories that didn’t work for me were: Flowers and Butterflies; The Trial of Gerald Blake; The Gift, and The Magic of Seagulls (As if in Her Shadow).

All in all, a good collection of short stories with far more hits than misses.

 (I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

 

Book Review: THE LAST MRS SINCLAIR

Title: The Last Mrs Sinclair

Author: TJ Emerson

Publisher: Boldwood Books

Pages: 378

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½

 

Twenty-four-year-old Leah Rose Williams is beautiful and she knows it. Stuck in a boring job, while living in a cramped apartment, she focuses on attracting rich, older men, hoping that a relationship will be her ticket to a better life. She has just dumped Nick, a married man she had been seeing, after he suggested going serious with the relationship.

Leah’s mother has taught her to believe that “All relationships are based on power, not love.” That she must “Step up and claim your power and, once you’ve got it, never ever give it away.” That “You are the prize, Leah. Always remember that.”

In just six weeks, Leah gets into a relationship with Miles Sinclair, 30 years her senior, who whisks her off to his family home in Chateau Clairvallon in France for a short vacation, and then proposes to her there. Soon he fixes up the wedding day in August.

Leah believes that finally she will have the life she was born to. The life she lost after her dad squandered her mom’s inheritance and deserted them.

Leah is thrilled beyond measure.

Though she does not love Miles, she is looking forward to the wealth that will soon be hers. For the sake of the wealth, she puts up with Miles’ age and the fact that he is still grieving the loss of his wife, Riley, who fell down to her death from the roof of Chateau Clairvallon.

At the chateau, Leah meets Miles’ cousin, Vivienne, who is mourning the death of her husband, Dom. Vivienne is now acting as Miles’ housekeeper at the chateau.

Excited about her turn of fortune, Leah prepares for her new life. But she cannot shake away the shadow of what happened to Riley? Was her death an accident or was it murder? And if it was murder, as the rumours in the village say, is she in danger too?

 

The book reminded me of Rebecca with Chateau Clairvallon being Manderley. At first I thought it was a retelling of Rebecca, but while the basic premise is similar, this one is different. The book is written in four parts, in the present tense PoV of Leah and Vivienne. It starts in May of an unnamed year, then continues up to July in two parts. The third and fourth parts pick up the story from August until the end.

 

The ‘last’ Mrs Sinclair has dual connotations, and the narrative does a good job of keeping us hooked on the stories of both Mrs Sinclairs.

The Prologue and the Epilogue were both done very well; the former grabbed my attention and pulled me into the story. While the book began on an exciting note, the middle, an extended section, lost steam, dragging the pace.

The chapters are dated only by month. It would have been better to date them too, so we would have some kind of countdown to the wedding, which is a critical point in the story.

The plot perked up at the 81% mark and then things began to happen in rapid succession. The final third was a huge improvement on the middle. 

I didn’t like Leah, nor any of the characters. But they were real and relatable.  In the end, though, I did feel a sense of pity for one of the characters.

There are themes like love, sex, incest, greed, wealth and power addressed in the book. There are some overly explicit sex scenes in the story, making this book unsuitable for younger readers.

We don’t know the year in which the book is set, only the month. But it seems to be a contemporary time, given that people have mobile phones and Internet, so Leah’s references (twice) to “freshening up between my legs”, instead of showering, sound weird, gross and unnecessary.

There are lots of proofing errors. Vivienne is referred to as Miles’ mother in one sentence.

A good thriller in spite of the issues.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: PARTING THE VEIL

Title: Parting the Veil

Author: Paulette Kennedy
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Pages: 367
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

Parting the Veil is a Gothic tale that is high on mystery and intrigue. The title refers to the parting of the veil that separates our world from that of the spirits.

In June 1899, American Eliza Sullivan arrives at Southampton, England, from New Orleans in the US with her half-sister, Lydia Tourant. She has let her past behind to start her new life in England, where she has inherited Sherbourne House from her deceased grandaunt.

According to the terms of the aunt’s will, Eliza must marry within three months of her arrival in England or else forfeit her claim to the house and estate.

Before long, Eliza falls in love with Lord Malcolm Winfield and his sprawling mansion, Havenwood Manor, not necessarily in that order, and rejects the suit of the richer Lord Charles Eastleigh, making herself an enemy in the process.

Smitten with Malcom and anxious to save him from being evicted from his home by Lord Eastleigh, Eliza elopes with Malcolm, even though her sister and nearly everyone in the village warn her of his bad reputation.

Once married, she wonders if she has made a mistake. Malcolm is a tender and fierce lover by night, but cold and distant during the day. Worse, the house appears haunted. There are ghostly sounds and shadows that frighten her. And Malcolm increasingly frightens her with his erratic moods. Lydia believes there is evil in that house.

Eliza wonders if she has married a man or a monster, and if there is any hope for her.

 

The book is written in the 3^rd person past tense PoV of Eliza. The events in the present are interspersed with entries from the diary of Ada, Malcolm’s mother.

Right at the outset, we learn that Eliza does not live up to society’s expectations of her time. She is a far cry from the virtuous heroines we see in books set in that time. Eliza might easily horrify the people of England, and not only because she is American. Her habits, sexual desires etc are in contravention of what is seen as ‘proper’ in Victorian England. She is not averse to smoking and drinking and is inclined to be adventurous and curious on account of having read far too many novels.

Nor is she keen on motherhood. Eliza would rather have a career, and build her own stables.

In fact, one of her suitors, Lord Charles Eastleigh is shocked to learn that she is the horsey sort. He also thinks her cheek does not suit a lady.

Lydia is another strong character, persevering in loyalty to her lineage, even when the easy thing would be to claim white privilege and parentage alongside Eliza.

Despite their differences and their conflict ridden past, the sisters are immensely loyal to each other.

There are some French words strewn through the book, a reminder of their New Orleans upbringing. We also learn about feu follet, the legendary spirit of French and Louisiana folklore. There’s also a glimpse of the Creole culture of Haiti with the respect accorded to voodoo. The faith elements also come out strongly with Lydia telling Eliza, You’ll only be a prayer away.

What I liked most about this book was the care invested in using appropriate vocabulary. Writers of historical fiction often inadvertently end up using words that didn’t exist in the time and place they are writing in. In this book, I had no such complaint. The vocabulary used by the author creates an image of the period, with its chamber pots beneath beds.

The language is pitch perfect. Century-old words for everything. I kept the Kindle dictionary busy, with my attempt to figure out the meanings of so many words, now in disuse. Those four stars are for the vocabulary and the language.

I also appreciated the little details. Lydia pointing out the British pronunciation of lieutenant as being funny, for instance. 

The dark tones hint at a delicious Gothic tale and deliver too.

Havenwood Manor is like Wuthering Heights; it exerts its charm and mystique on us. With its spiral and grand staircases, a conservatory and a grand foyer among other things, it would be a treat to see the house on screen. The burned down dilapidated south wing might have its own tragic beauty. The author brings out well the sense of sadness and mystery surrounding the house.

The action scenes are handled well. The scene where Eliza finally steps on to the south wing had me reading with nervous excitement.

Trigger warning: for mental illness, suicide, incest, sexual abuse, domestic abuse etc. 

The pace of the book is rather laidback. This is fine in the first part of the book, but gets gradually annoying in the middle, when we wait for things to happen.

The book could, and should, have been shorter. It took a long time to get going.

After the wedding, I found the wild lovemaking tedious. It was annoying to be told repeatedly about the ache between her legs.

Till the 61 percent mark, I couldn’t see which way the story was headed. There was no clear antagonist in sight. The pace picked up in the last 100 pages. Unfortunately, I wasn’t impressed with the resolution. It seemed forced, and the explanation wasn’t explained properly.

There are a number of queer characters here. At the end of the book, one of the prominent, yet little known, characters says, This is one queer tale. I’d say, in more ways than one.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: I SEE YOU SO CLOSE

Title: I See You So Close (The Last Ghost #2) 

Author: M Dressler

Pages: 264

Publisher: Arcade

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

You may have read and heard plenty of ghost stories, but I see you so close, my first 5-star read of 2021, is one of a kind. As Su Kwon, one of the characters says, this one is real.

Irish-born Emma Rose Finnis died of drowning in 1915 and is now a ghost. Having haunted a mansion for over a hundred years, she has only recently figured out how to escape the mansion that she has been haunting. Now her spirit has donned the dead body of another girl, and she is anxious to get away, to stay one step ahead of the ghost hunters, namely, her arch enemy, Philip Pratt.

She finds herself in the secluded town of White Bar, welcomed by the kind townsfolk, especially Mayor Martha Hayley, John and Mary Berringer, Ruth Huellet etc. All the residents recognise the vulnerability in her, and invite her to stay on and build a life for herself in their town, emphasising repeatedly that White Bar is a place of peace and rest, a magical place of joy.

At first she intends to stay just for one night, and leave the next morning, but the sight of two hands in flowered sleeves in the oven in Martha’s kitchen haunts her with its cry for help, and she decides to stay on.

She comes to know of a fire in an old, locked schoolhouse, and becomes consumed by the idea of unravelling the mystery and setting the pain free. There she comes to know of gold-seeker turned schoolmaster Landon Albert Longhurst whose fists are stronger. 

And all along she faces a corporeal danger, in the shape of ghost hunter, Pratt, intent on blasting her to nothing.

The book is written in the first person present tense point of view of Emma and is divided into two parts, The Ghost and The Door.

The hardsell for White Bar made me uncomfortable from the very beginning, leading me to wonder what secrets this perfect place concealed.

I liked Emma. She is an old soul, literally and figuratively. There’s a message of kindness to counter pain through the short fuse of her temper. Pain that must be dealt with in order to strive for reparation and justice.

Emma tells us, Haunting is listening and Haunting is waiting and the world needs more of that to counter the many wrongs that continue to remain unaddressed centuries later.

At first, Emma is a real ghost of a character. The author is careful not to smother us with her back story, letting us get to know her in the present, letting out only an occasional nugget about the past.

I wasn’t familiar with the setting, but the descriptions and the sense of setting emerged beautifully. The description of the small frontier town in the High Sierras is evocative. I enjoyed reading about its gold panning history.

The language is gorgeous, poetic and beautiful.

There’s no simple map to a stranger’s soul. No arrow that will point out one heart’s way to another.

There are philosophical undertones to this book that remind us of what people, like souls, need. Not just rest, but as Emma tells us, Adventure… Love. Whatever you were denied in life. Justice. Freedom.

Every piece of earth is a grave… One way or another.

Death is Near. Always.

There’s nothing easier, or more useful, than giving a soul what it wants.

They are all lessons of living from a soul who’s been dead for far longer than she’s been alive.

Another character tells us, If you can’t get rid of the knives, then it’s who you hand them to that matters.

Another character says, The devil hands a broken heart the hammer that smashed it, then tells it to smash the next heart closest.

Some proofing errors mar the overall effect, but only slightly. As when Su Kwon says, “We really do watch for each another.”

Ultimately this ghost story with a heart was one beautiful and lush read with a befitting ending and then an Epilogue that was just perfect.

 

(I read this book through Edelweiss. Thank you to the author, the publisher and Edelweiss.) 

Book Review: THE SECRETS BETWEEN US

Title: The Secrets Between Us
Author: Black Swan
Publisher: Plough Publishing House
Pages: 544
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Devastated by the loss of her child due to stillbirth and the subsequent and the subsequent unfaithfulness of her partner, Laurie, Sarah is an emotional wreck. On a trip to Sicily with her sister May and brother-in-law Neil, Sarah meets Alexander in the hotel in which they are staying. She is drawn to Alex and his nearly-seven-year-old son Jamie, whose mother Genevieve has left their home.

After an impulsive act of sex, Alex invites Sarah to come and stay with him in his home in Burrington Stoke, look after his son as a “paid nanny and housekeeper” and explore their relationship. Sarah agrees, even though her family warns her not to go. She feels that both she and Alex have experienced heartbreak and that they might be good for each other. Also, having lost her child, her mothering instinct is aroused at the sight of Jamie, and she insists on going.

But Sarah’s dream of setting up home with Alex and his son seems doomed. Jamie is deeply suspicious of Sarah. Genevieve’s wealthy family, especially her mother Virginia Churchill, is standoffish, while her step sister, Claudia, is friendly towards her. But Sarah knows that the animosities persist. The villagers are resentful of Sarah, seeing her presence as evidence of Alex’s crime, and of his shamelessness in bringing home his mistress.

Sarah is torn between the suspicion that Alex may be responsible for Genevieve’s disappearance and her love for him. Could he really have done away with her? Could a man like him, so charming and loving and kind, be capable of killing to get his way? Could he kill again?

The book is a re-telling of Daphne du Maurier’s classic, Rebecca. Genevieve is perfect, like Rebecca. Everyone in the village liked her and everyone, especially her own rich family, the Churchills who own the quarry and a great deal of property in nearly half the village, is suspicious of Alex, believing that he has something to do with Genevieve’s disappearance. That he is hiding something. Alex himself thinks that she has gone away to be with some lover that he doesn’t know of.

Like Manderley, the village of Burrington Stoke is picturesque, despite the quarry in the neighbourhood. There is also the hint of a ghost that plagues Sarah. The descriptions of the ghost are good, scaring Sarah and us, while we are at it. Sarah believes that the ghost she is seeing is that of Genevieve.

 

 

I feel conflicted about Sarah. Like her family, I disagreed with her decision and thought Alex to be too good to be true. Another thing that seemed odd was how she was so fond of Jamie, particularly when the kid didn’t bond with her at all.

Of the minor characters, I loved both May and Neil. Neil, in particular, was totally supportive of Sarah. Both of them were willing to do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

Even Claudia, Genevieve’s half-sister, and Betsy, the woman from the village who is the only one who holds a completely unselfish friendship with Sarah, stand out of the crowd. They were very real.

Another thing I enjoyed were the detailed descriptions, with just enough detail to paint a word picture. The house, Avalon, was big and rambling and creaky, adding to the atmosphere.

 

I lost interest in the book for a brief while. I only plodded on because I have a thing about not giving up on books. At 544 pages, this one was way too long. A good 200 pages could have been cut down, if Alex had quit brooding and come clean with Sarah.

Book Review: THE DEAD HOUSE: A NOVEL

Title: The Dead House: A Novel

Author: Billy O'Callaghan
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Pages: 224

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Dead House by Billy O’Callaghan is high on atmosphere and silent menace and manages to keep the tension high right up to the end.

The book is written from the first person past tense point of view of Michael Simmons, an art agent, married to Alison and the father of Hannah. Michael gets pulled into the drama of Maggie Turner, an artist-cum-friend, for whom he cares deeply.

Getting away from an abusive relationship, Maggie buys an old dilapidated house in a scenic locale and spends a fortune, borrowing heavily from Michael, in renovating it. Once done, she invites Michael, an art gallery owner-friend Alison, with whom she wants to set Michael up, and Liz, a poet, for the housewarming. That weekend, Liz brings out an Ouija board, and for the fun of it, summons spirits to get in contact with them. A spirit calling itself The Master asks permission to enter in Irish. Only their Irish language skills being weak, they mistake the question for permission to join.

Slowly the joy leaves Maggie as she lets the house go to seed, living with the stench of death and the real presence of the Master in the house.

Michael and Alison decide to drive down and make one big effort to save her. Will they succeed? Will the evil release its hold on Maggie? Or will it consume all their lives?

This, to me, was horror of the worst kind, the horror of watching a loved one lost forever to something inexplicable rather than just things going bump in the night. This book will really terrify you, once you imagine something as terrible as this happening to someone you care for.

The Dead House is not a typical ghost story. The book ends on an unsettling note. There is a sense of something terrible waiting to happen. The horror of it is like a sword dangling on our heads. We know it is going to fall. The question is when.

When the horror appears to want to take little Hannah into its fold, Michael and Alison realise that their worst nightmare has invaded the present. For us as readers too, this is a disquieting realization. The fact that the author makes no promise of an upcoming sequel in which the horror might be put to rest makes the situation even worse.

Part I shows us Michael in the present, telling us of his friendship with Maggie. Part II takes us to her obsession with the house and the summoning of the spirit. Part III is back in the present, 9 years later.

The physical descriptions of that part of Ireland are hauntingly beautiful, and reading these passages gave me gooseflesh. It’s almost as if the place doesn’t exist on the same plane as the rest of us do. In a city with its crowds and traffic noise, reality is a sheet of thick glass… Out here, just like the ocean, it pulls to tide and current. And, just like the ocean, its surface can be easily broken.

The descriptions give us a glimpse of the generations that have existed, centuries ago, never knowing of other lives. Of places where time stood still, where nothing had changed, where rocks, ocean, sky, wind and rain were the only things that weren’t fleeting.

Michael is a pragmatic man, who comes from a belief system that doesn’t subscribe to anything not of this world. The stains of skepticism are just as hard to scrub away as those of faith. But living through the horror that engulfs Maggie, he changes his mind. We glimpse or experience something that defies explanation and we either accept the stretch in our reality or we choose to turn our heads away.

In a book beset with bad men such as Maggie’s abusive ex-boyfriend Pete and Alison’s ex-husband Laurence who modelled the term ‘selfish bastard’ at professional catwalk level, Michael comes across as an inherently good man.

But even he admits that he could have done more to save Maggie, to prevent the nightmare that happened to her, or even to make some attempt, futile though it may have been, to rescue her. We all think that we’ll walk through walls for the people who matter most to us, that we’ll willingly push ourselves against the muzzle of a gun for them. But we can’t know. Not until the moment arrives.

His experiences give him a new perspective on places that are supposed to be haunted, an explanation that he clings to because the alternative would drive him crazy. People talk all the time about haunted places… But I’m not sure it has much to do with ghosts. I think it just means it’s held tightly by the past in ways that other places aren’t.

We receive no clear answer about what happened to Maggie or to what the Master did to her. We can only imagine how horrible the consequence may have been, given that the reveries summoned to Maggie’s mind during the Ouija session are so deeply disturbing. We are reminded of issues such as mortality and the beyond and what reality is, and how much of the other world presses down on us.

The Prologue seeks to introduce the subject to us in a philosophical vein. By the end of the book, neither Michael nor we have much use for the philosophy. So strong is the sense of terror conjured up.

(I read this book through NetGalley.)