Review: Let Him In

Read from 23rd – 28th September 2023

Synopsis: 

William Friend’s haunting debut Let Him In is a creeping, gothic psychological suspense about a young, newly widowed father struggling to raise twin daughters obsessed with an imaginary friend.

“Daddy, there’s a man in our room…”

Alfie wakes one night to find his twin daughters at the foot of his bed, claiming there’s a shadowy figure in their bedroom. When no such thing can be found, he assumes the girls had a nightmare.

He isn’t surprised that they’re troubled. Grief has made its home at Hart House: nine months ago, the twins’ mother Pippa died unexpectedly, leaving Alfie to raise them alone. And now, when the girls mention a new imaginary friend, it seems like a harmless coping mechanism. But the situation quickly develops into something more insidious. The girls set an extra place for him at the table. They whisper to him. They say he’s going to take them away…

Alfie calls upon Julia—Pippa’s sister and a psychiatrist—to oust the malignant tenant from their lives. But as Alfie himself is haunted by visions and someone watches him at night, he begins to question the true character of the force that has poisoned his daughters’ minds, with dark and violent consequences.

Whatever this “friend” is, he doesn’t want to leave. Alfie will have to confront his own shameful secrets, the dark past of Hart House, and even the bounds of reality—or risk taking part in an unspeakable tragedy.

Bookish Things: 240 pages. The cover is suitably creepy and fits with the genre of choice.

Review: The Quiet Stillness of Empty Houses

Read from 13th August – 8th September 2023

Synopsis: 

Theodora Corvus can hear the whispers of her crumbling family home. She can hear the whispers of Kingsward Manor, her place of employment. She sees the watchers by the lake, black-eyed and waiting. But Broken Oak is silent. Broken Oak is empty.

When Theodora takes the job as governess to young Ottoline Thorne, she leaves behind her beloved grandmother and the decaying ruins of her childhood home to travel far north to Broken Oak Manor. There, she finds a house filled with secrets. Under the stern eye of the foreboding housekeeper, Theodora quickly navigates the dark and winding corridors of Broken Oak, only to find herself irrevocably drawn to the mysterious lord of the manor. But someone walks the hallways late after nightfall, their footsteps leading to the attic. The only place in the sprawling house that does not remain silent.

As her scandalous feelings for Cassias Thorne grow, Theodora fights to unearth the secrets of Broken Oak. Who wanders the house at night? Where is the Lady of the manor? What lies behind the attic door high up under the eaves of the house?

“Where is Lady Thorne, Cassias? Where is your wife?”

Bookish Things: 194 pages. The cover is glorious and very fitting of the style of story.

Review: Memory of Dragons

Read from 29th June to 6th July 2023

Synopsis: With a dragon’s magic, even a memory can be dangerous…

Austin is an American grad student, on leave to mourn the death of his girlfriend, Rhi. Yet during a pilgrimage to her favorite place on the Welsh coast, he finds she may not be as dead as he thought. A pickpocket named Corinna claims to have stolen her memories. Rhi was a wizard from another world, she insists, and if Austin doesn’t trust her, that world will perish in an apocalypse of dragons.

Austin rejects Corinna’s story. Magic? Stolen memories? Dragons? Yet soon, a sinister figure begins stalking him. A glowing crystal speaks with a voice in his mind. When a creature too horrible to be natural attacks, snarling Austin’s name through mangled mandibles, he must reexamine his grasp of reality, or die.

Corinna might be his only hope. Can he trust her, an admitted thief, when the voice from the crystal calls her a liar? Meanwhile, Austin’s stalker creeps ever closer, murderous, implacable, and seeking a confrontation on which hinges Austin’s life, Rhi’s death, and the fate of two worlds.

Memory of Dragons imagines our fairy tale monsters are another world’s criminal castoffs, and that magic can exist, if we can stomach the cost.

Bookish Things: 315 pages. The cover is quite eye-catching. Lovely font!

Review: All the dark souls

Read from 19th – 27th April 2023

Synopsis: 

Joss Brevyn is the last heir in a long line of executioners. Although a woman, the same rules still apply: kill the condemned within three tries, or be tortured and killed. Joss has yet to miss her mark, and even though she spends her free time as a healer, the town views her only as a deathsman. So when she and her assistant, Henrik, stumble upon a beaten man on the way home, both are hesitant to reveal who they really are. The only problem is, so is he.

Aric Kayden has seen better days. After failing to assassinate his last victim, he’s left bleeding on the side of the road until he’s found and taken in by Joss and Henrik, two seemingly innocent locals. Healing from his wounds, Aric is still haunted by the target he didn’t kill, especially by those who paid him. Despite the undeniable attraction between him and Joss, Aric can’t bring himself to tell the truth: that the masked figures who hired him knows where he is, and his original target is the mysterious prisoner who was recently sentenced to death. Forced to uphold the deal, Aric’s only job now is to make sure the execution goes as planned and eliminate whoever intervenes.

Bound by their duties, both Joss and Aric assume this next kill will be easy. But then one of them has a change of heart, sparking a chain reaction that could leave one—or both—of them dead.

Review: Whispers Through a Megaphone

Read from 11-17th April 2023

Synopsis: 

Miriam hasn’t left her house in three years, and cannot raise her voice above a whisper. But today she has had enough, and is finally ready to rejoin the outside world.

Meanwhile, Ralph has made the mistake of opening a closet door, only to discover with a shock that his wife Sadie doesn’t love him, and never has. And so he decides to run away.

Miriam and Ralph’s chance meeting in a wood during stormy weather marks the beginning of an amusing, restorative friendship, while Sadie takes a break from Twitter to embark on an intriguing adventure of her own. As their collective story unfolds, each of them seeks to better understand the objects of their affection, and their own hearts, timidly refusing to stand still and accept the chaos life throws at them. Filled with wit and sparkling prose, Whispers Through a Megaphone explores our attempts to meaningfully connect with ourselves and others, in an often deafening world – when sometimes all we need is a bit of silence.

AWW2020 Review: Crossing the Lines

Read from 4 – 30 August 2020.

Synopsis: When Madeleine d’Leon conjures Ned McGinnity as the hero in her latest crime novel, she makes him a serious writer simply because the irony of a protagonist who’d never lower himself to read the story in which he stars amuses her.

When Ned McGinnity creates Madeleine d’Leon, she is his literary device, a writer of detective fiction who is herself a mystery to be unravelled.
As Ned and Madeleine play out their own lives while writing the other’s story, they find themselves crossing the lines that divide the real and the imagined.

This is a story about two people trying to hold onto each other beyond reality.