| Flowers for the Sea
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| The Haunting of Leigh Harker
I hate the cover, in a good way. It is deceivingly simple but the positioning of the silhouette over one eye and a house over the other gives me goosebumps and that alone is why this is a great choice as a thrilling horror read.
The quaint suburban house was Leigh Harker's haven for over a decade. It was where she returned from a busy day to relax and recover but recently, things have changed and her home is no longer one of comfort. The curtains move on their own. The radio plays without her touch. Fingernail scratches can be heard and at night, a figure has begun to watch over her.
Leigh has been pushed to the limits by these terrifying changes but she can't bring herself to abandon her beautiful home. She needs answers. She needs a solution. She needs to transform her home back into a haven but as each step brings her closer to answers, Leigh fears she will never escape.
| Reprieve
The year is 1997, the month April, the day the 27th, the location a full-contact escape room. Four players enter, only three survive. Located inside Quigley House, a home filled with horrors and monstrosities, is a room that if you can "escape" without calling for safety results in a substantial cash prise.
Before the challenge can begin, the room is broken into leaving behind Kendra Brown, Leonard Grandson, and Jade Charoeensuk alive to tell the tale. A tale that soon exposes the horrifying reality of how the contestants beliefs and actions led to that devastating night and lifeless body on the floor.
| The Lighthouse Witches
Liv accepts the commission to paint a mural within a 100 year-old lighthouse located on a remote island in Scotland as it sounds like the ideal new start her and her three daughters - Luna, Clover, and Sapphire need. But, when Sapphire and Clover disappear, Liv becomes panicked and then distraught when she learns that underneath their new home is an old prison for women accused of witchcraft. The locals warn her that her missing children may return but if they do, they could return as wildings, creatures created by the prisoners as a form of revenge. The wildings may look like her children but they are not - they are dangerous and vicious creatures and they must be killed.
Twenty-two years after her siblings disappearance, Luna has never stopped searching for her missing sisters or mother and when she receives a call about Clover, that she has been found alive, Luna is over the moon with joy. Clover is exactly as she remembers when she disappeared, she's even still seven years-old. Haunted by the wilding stories of her childhood and terrified of the ageless face before her, Luna must return to the island and find the truth. Luna needs to know what happened to her family unaware that uncovering the truth will change her in ways she cannot imagine.
Find the full review | HERE | for The Lighthouse Witches
| The Final Girl Support Group
A final girl is the last girl standing when the credits roll. She is the girl who fought, overcame, and survived. She is the one that emerges victorious but once the screen turns black, what happens to a final girl?
Lynnette Tarkington is a final girl. Twenty-two years ago she survived a massacre and every day since has been defined by that day and she is not alone. One of her ways of coping is to attend a meeting with five other final girls, the sole purpose of each meeting to support one another and piece their lives back together.
And, progress is being made until one girl misses a meeting and Lynnette comes to the terrifying realisation that somebody knows about their group and is determined to break them once again. But, unlike before, this time they heave each other and no matter the danger, they will fight until the credits roll.
If you are intrigued by The Final Girl Support Group, check out the Final Girls review as that novel may also be up your alley!
| The Whistling
| The Last House on Needles Street
A serial killer. A taken child. Revenge. Death. All within the confines of one ordinary street. You think you know this story. You think you know what's lurking inside the last house on an ordinary street. You think you know how this type of story goes.
You are wrong. At the last house on Needles street lies an adjacent forest and it is what is found buried there where this story transforms, transforms into a story that you could never fathom.
| The Death of Jane Lawrence
Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations and determined her most secure path forward is marriage; a marriage of convenience that will provide her with independence but also occupation. Her choice of spouse, Augustine Lawrence. Augustine is a reclusive doctor who surprisingly agrees to her proposal but under one condition, Jane is never allowed to visit his family manor.
Jane readily agrees until an accident on their wedding night strands her outside the Hall with Augustine inside and - different. Gone is the bold surgeon she married replaced with a paranoid man who cannot tell nightmare from reality and one whose terrified Jane is a figment of his imagination.
By morning Augustine has returned to the man Jane married but she isn't convinced all is okay, something is wrong with the Hall and the man she secured herself too.
| House of Hollow
The Hollow sisters haven't always been oddities. It was only after they reappeared from their month-long disappearance with black eyes and white hair that they earned that title.
Iris, the youngest of the three siblings, has spent most of her life since that month avoiding the strangeness that lingers wherever she goes. But when her eldest sister goes missing, Iris learns she cannot hide from the strangeness and that she truly knew nothing about being strange.
With horned men, dead bodies, and disgustingly beautiful memories resurfacing, Iris's journey to find her sister requires her to untangle the mystery of their disappearance and as she gets closer to the truth, Iris discovers her missing and beloved sister has been keeping a terrible secret from her since their return.
Find the full review | HERE | for House of Hollow
| The Girls Are Never Gone
As the voice of a brand-new paranormal investigation podcast, Dare Chase publicly believes in ghosts. Privately though, Dare doesn't believe in the paranormal but her listeners don't need to know that.
An upcoming episode has landed her at Arrington Estate, home to a teenage drowning and lingering spirit. Dare is intrigued by the circumstances around the drowning, not the spirit, as she believes the culprit of the crime is out there and alive. Regardless of her skepticism, Dare is determined to keep an open mind and it is a good thing she does as Arrington Estate is filled with surprises, both good, baffling, and bad.
As the mysteries draw her in closer, she must be careful otherwise she too could be pulled into the lake... and stuck there for good.
| Bloodline
Having grown up on the move, the offer to permanently settle in her fiancé's old hometown is an offer Joan Harken cannot refuse. The idea of forming roots in a town her fiancé grew up in is something that makes Joan cautiously optimistic, it is the perfect time and potentially the perfect place for their life as a family to begin but upon their arrival, there is something Joan cannot shake about the Minnesotan village - it all seems off.
Her fiancé tells her she's paranoid, that the overbearing friendliness is just how Minnesotan's are, that the idea she is being followed is ridiculous, and the concept of a ghost from her past watching her is nothing but nerves and an overactive imagination. Of course Joan knows her fiancé is right but then again, she may have just moved to the friendliest and deadliest town on earth.
| Summer Sons
Andrew and Eddie are best friends, growing up they did everything together - that is until Andrew left for his graduate program at Vanderbilt. Six months later, days before Andrew was set to join him and continue their journey together, Eddie dies of an apparent suicide. Andrew is left alone in a world he never asked for and a phantom following him who wants revenge. A phantom that causes Andrew to search for the truth behind Eddie's death, a truth filled with lies and secrets from the person he trusted the most.
Drugs, hot boys, and fast cars begin to crack the walls Andrew has built and as his world begins to crumble, the phantom that craves him begins to draw closer in.
| The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall
Despite my personal distaste for the cover, I know Katie Alender, author of The Companion, has something up her sleeve with this novel and I am so prepared for it. Anything with asylum's gives me the creeps and this is on my list to read when I truly need a fright.
Delia has moved into a new home even if the house itself is anything but new. Decades ago, it was home to the Piven Institute for the Care and Correction of Troubled Females, an asylum locals coined "Hysteria Hall." Except, the Hall wasn't home to just the insane but also the defiant and strong, traits Delia herself possesses and the type of woman the Hall wants to keep locked away.
Soon, Delia is trapped and her capture leads her to the realisation her new home is haunted. Ghosts roam the hall carrying with them secrets and displacement; it is up to her to unbind them from their misery before it's too late and the Hall takes her too.
