Published: February 3rd 2022
Publisher: Zaffre
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Gothic Fiction, Crime Fiction, Psychological Fiction
Format: Hardcover, Kindle, Audiobook
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for this unsettling gothic tale. Thanks to Tracy at Compulsive Readers Tours for the invitation to take part and Zaffre for the ARC.
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SYNOPSIS:
A house built on secrets
An old woman haunted by her past
A young woman fighting for her life
For Sara Keane, it was supposed to be a second chance.
A new country. A new house. A new beginning.
Then came the knock on the door.
Elderly Mary Jackson can’t understand why Sara and her husband are living in her home.
She remembers the fire. She remembers the house burning down. But she also remembers the children. The children who need her. The children she must protect.
‘The children will find you,’ she tells Sara, because Mary knows she needs help too. As Sara becomes obsessed with what happened in that house nearly sixty years ago, and the family wiped out in one bloody night, she begins to see things. Things that can’t be real.
In a story that spans six decades, the truth will not stay buried, and the ghosts of the past can never remain in the shadows . . .
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MY REVIEW:
“The children. They’ll find you… They’re hiding. Waiting for me. Waiting for you.”
A fire tears through The Ashes in the dead of night, forcing Mary to flee the only home she’s ever known and reducing it to a shell. Sara and Damien Keene move in as it is being rebuilt, but strange occurrences leave Sara feeling uneasy. Then one morning, an old woman turns up, her feet bloodied, demanding to know why Sara is in her house and where the children are. Who is this woman? And what children is she talking about? Unsatisfied with her husband’s explanation, Sara is determined to discover what secrets he and the house is hiding. The old woman is the key. But can she get Mary to finally speak the secrets she’s been holding in for decades?
The House of Ashes is a dark, twisted and unsettling gothic novel that you don’t want to read in the dark. From the first pages I had chills, reading on tenterhooks with an almost unbearable feeling of dread in my stomach. It isn’t a book for the faint hearted; the author explores dark themes such as abuse that are written with both brutal honesty and heartwarming compassion. It is in these themes that we see Mary and Sara’s lives mirror each other; both kept prisoner in The Ashes by men who terrify them. And just as the house kept them captive, the book did the same to me, refusing to let me go until I’d read the final page and its story had been told.
“People about the town would say she’s mad in the head. Some of the children would call her Scary Mary. And fair enough, she might be a wee bit touched, but who wouldn’t be after what she went through.”
Told by multiple narrators, the story unfolds in the past and the present. Sara and Mary are the main narrators and while Sara’s story mostly focuses on the present, Mary tells the story of her past. She finally speaks the secrets she’s been silent about for sixty years, slowly revealing to the reader the dark secrets that the house holds within its walls and the true horror of that bloody night. I had a real soft spot for all of the women but felt for Mary most. She was a young girl who knew nothing but a life within the walls of The Ashes. A life of neglect, abuse and fear that made the house both her misery and her solace. Seeing the story through her eyes was heartrending and I loved how the author managed to convey such childish innocence alongside her resignation to things no one should ever know.
“Maybe you shouldn’t know too much about that place. Not if you’re going to live in it.”
The Ashes is more than just a house. It is like another character that lives and breathes. A sense of malevolence and foreboding radiating from this chilling place. But the strange and unnerving occurrences aren’t merely there to torment it’s inhabitants, it is the past returning to try and warn those in the present. Warnings they must heed in order to survive.
Darkly atmospheric, harrowing and haunting, The House of Ashes is a chilling gothic tale. Just make sure you read with the lights on!
Rating: ✮✮✮✮✰
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MEET THE AUTHOR:
Stuart Neville’s debut novel, THE TWELVE (published in the USA as THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST), won the Mystery/Thriller category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was picked as one of the top crime novels of 2009 by both the New York Times and the LA Times. He has been shortlisted for various awards, including the Barry, Macavity, Dilys awards, as well as the Irish Book Awards Crime Novel of the Year. He has since published three critically acclaimed sequels, COLLUSION, STOLEN SOULS and THE FINAL SILENCE.
His first four novels have each been longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and RATLINES was shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.
Stuart’s novels have been translated into various languages, including German, Japanese, Polish, Swedish, Greek and more. The French edition of The Ghosts of Belfast, Les Fantômes de Belfast, won Le Prix Mystère de la Critique du Meilleur Roman Étranger and Grand Prix du Roman Noir Étranger.
His fourth novel, RATLINES, about Nazis harboured by the Irish state following WWII is currently in development for television.
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BUY THE BOOK:
Waterstones*| Amazon*| Bookshop.org*
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Please check out the reviews from the other bloggers taking part in the tour.
Thanks for reading Bibliophiles ☺️ Emma xxx
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