The Night Strangers

 The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian  378 pages

Summary from publisher: In a dusty corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire, a door has long been sealed shut with 39 six-inch-long carriage bolts. 

           
The home's new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin ten-year-old daughters. Together they hope to rebuild their lives there after Chip, an airline pilot, has to ditch his 70-seat regional jet in Lake Champlain after double engine failure. Unlike the Miracle on the Hudson, however, most of the passengers aboard Flight 1611 die on impact or drown. The body count? Thirty-nine - a coincidence not lost on Chip when he discovers the number of bolts in that basement door. Meanwhile, Emily finds herself wondering about the women in this sparsely populated White Mountain village - self-proclaimed herbalists - and their interest in her fifth-grade daughters. Are the women mad? Or is it her husband, in the wake of the tragedy, whose grip on sanity has become desperately tenuous?   

And here's what I thought: I have read other books by this author that I enjoyed, and I liked this one --- although not as much as some of the others, admittedly. This is a ghost story combined with a creepy haunted-house seeming story, combined with herbal lore. The characters are interesting and I liked that sometimes, I couldn't quite tell if they were reliable narrators or not. It's clear that something is wrong with Chip, since he seems to be seeing and hearing dead people. And some of the women in the town definitely seem to be hiding something --- are they witches? Maybe just weird women? I liked some of the elements of the story, although I sometimes became a little impatient with some of the characters. And, there were some surprises here -- and I was definitely surprised by the ending and had expected something different.  

While You Sleep

While You Sleep by Stephanie Merritt  389 pages    I read a galley - book due out 3/5/19

So you think you know psychological thrillers? Think again. This story starts with a chill and never warms up, and combined with a steadily increasing pace and an unreliable narrator, is a book that will stay in your mind long after you've finished the last page.

Zoe Adams has left her husband and son for a bit of a break, choosing a remote Scottish island for her refuge. The McBride house appears to be a peaceful retreat...until the first night Zoe is there and in the throes of a dream, is sure someone is in the house. And is she hearing singing?  This is the beginning of a series of disturbing events, when Zoe feels she is being watched, especially at night. But if she is alone in the house, how does she explain the sounds? And the increasingly erotic and disturbing dreams she is having? The locals believe the McBride house holds echoes of its dark past, but is there a real person behind what has been happening to Zoe? Is this a ghost story or something much more sinister?

This is the perfect kind of disturbing, unsettling story for readers who like A.J. Finn's The Woman in the Window and books by Claire MacIntosh and Ruth Ware. Basically, if you like unsettling stories that may be ghost stories (or may be a story of paranoia) mixed with a bit of erotica, this is your book.

I found myself constantly surprised by this story, wondering if Zoe is an unbalanced person, or just someone suffering from some kind of grief, and also wondering just what the hell is happening in the McBride house. Is there a dark force in the house that is at work and responsible for the strange things happening to Zoe? What about the locals? The man who owns the house seems nice enough, but he's nervous when he's in the house. The man who owns the bookshop has done a lot of research on the McBride family and he seems to have a feeling of what's happening to Zoe, especially when she uncovers a diary and brings it to him.  But the real question I kept asking myself wasn't whether or not some of the local people were to be suspected, but if Zoe was in her right mind. I found her an interesting character: sympathetic, yet prickly enough at times to be irritating. She's clearly believing what she's hearing, seeing and feeling ---- but as a reader, you start to wonder if some of this is just in her mind.  By the time I reached the end of the book, I still wasn't sure.  I actually put the book to the side for a few days before writing this post because I couldn't figure out what to say about the book.

Definitely an interesting read and a story that stuck in my mind!

THE GIRL IN THE LOCKED ROOM

The Girl In The Locked Room by Mary Downing Hahn
193 pages
Reviewed by Rae C.

https://slpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1425265116


Jules is tired of moving, and she hates the creepy old houses that they live in while her father renovates. The dad is a total narcissist.  The mom's a writer and really self absorbed. Both parents lack any supernatural gifts. Jules is a psychic and medium, although she doesn't know it.  She's felt things and seen spirits in other houses, but thinks it is her imagination.  But this time, Jules finds more and more evidence that Lily, the girl in the locked room, was real, and that she needs Jules help to cross over.

Really well done supernatural thriller!  It's not super scary, or horror.  Just an old-fashioned ghost story. It's well written and paced, well plotted, and the ending is satisfying in terms of issues with Jules' family, but the ghost story had a somewhat sloppy resolution. (See below if you don't mind spoilers.)  But the complaints I have weren't enough to spoil my enjoyment of this book!






(****SPOILERS**** and complaints: the inclusion of Frozen Charlotte dolls for no reason; relying on Dianna Wynne Jones alternate reality theory but not explaining clearly why Lily's bones weren't in the wardrobe, and thus, how two Lily's would now be inhabiting the alternate world.)

This House is Haunted

This House is Haunted by John Boyne     304 pages

From Goodreads:

1867. Eliza Caine arrives in Norfolk to take up her position as governess at Gaudlin Hall on a dark and chilling night. As she makes her way across the station platform, a pair of invisible hands push her from behind into the path of an approaching train. She is only saved by the vigilance of a passing doctor.

When she finally arrives, shaken, at the hall she is greeted by the two children in her care, Isabella and Eustace. There are no parents, no adults at all, and no one to represent her mysterious employer. The children offer no explanation. Later that night in her room, a second terrifying experience further reinforces the sense that something is very wrong.

From the moment she rises the following morning, her every step seems dogged by a malign presence which lives within Gaudlin’s walls. Eliza realises that if she and the children are to survive its violent attentions, she must first uncover the hall’s long-buried secrets and confront the demons of its past…

My Review:

The creepy atmosphere and the unanswered questions really set the spooky tone for this story. Following Eliza Caine, who i
s seemingly dropped into a completely blind into a manor full of secrets, you, the reader, are as desperate as she is to get to the bottom of the strange and treacherous happenings at Gaudlin Hall. With this story, Boyne parodies Dickens's style of story writing - slow paced, a bit creepy with a tinge of scary, and a cast of odd and mysterious characters embody the work. I loved ever bit of it - it's a ghost story, but one that slowly reveals itself. It's no thriller, and yet it still manages to keep you on the edge of your seat. I loved how each layer is peeled back carefully and in such a way that only bits and pieces of the story reveal themselves at a time. Yes, I was able to come to some conclusions earlier on than their reveal, but I didn't mind - the writing and the narrator, Eliza, are so well put together.

The one thing that really disappointed me was the ending - I understand why Boyne decided to leave the book on that particular note, but I didn't care for it. Perhaps it won't bother anyone, but for me, it was unsatisfactory.

While not scary, I enjoyed reading this through the month of October. It has spooky elements and it very much inhabited the spirit of spooky ghost stories. I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a ghost story wrapped up in an historical era drama.

The Silence of Ghosts

The Silence of Ghosts by Jonathan Aycliffe
224  Pages

When Dominic Lancaster dies, he leaves everything to his grandson, including a house in the Lake district that no one remembered.  The instructions for the house are to destroy it.  The grandson also conveniently gets a diary that outlines what happened to Dominic during World War II when he is sent to recuperate at the house with his 10 year old deaf sister Octavia.

A disappointing ghost story with a very odd ending.  I would not recommend.