Kate Keeling leaves all she knows and moves to Haverscroft House in an attempt to salvage her marriage.
Little does she realise, Haverscroft's dark secrets will drive her to question her sanity, her husband and fatally engulf her family unless she can stop the past repeating itself. Can Kate keep her children safe and escape Haverscroft in time, even if it will end her marriage?
Haverscroft is a gripping and chilling dark tale, a modern ghost story that will keep you turning its pages late into the night.
Haverscroft by SA Harris was published in paperback by Salt on 15 May 2019. My thanks to Emma from Salt who sent my copy for review and who also invited me to take part in this Halloween Blog Tour.
Haverscroft is probably my perfect Halloween read. I'm not a huge fan of traditional horror stories, and rarely read ghostly tales; this contemporary telling of the age-old haunted house tale is superbly done and I enjoyed every single spine-tingling page.
The story opens as Kate, her husband Mark and their nine-year-old twins are moving into Haverscroft House. It's clear from the narrative that the move has been pushed through by Mark; he's taken control of the situation and organised their departure from her London home. Kate's voice is shaky and unsure and it soon becomes clear that she's been very ill recently, and that there's some kind of incident in their past that isn't being spoken about. Kate feels that in order to keep her family together, she has to agree to the upheaval.
Haverscroft House is old, and dirty and full of unexpected surprises; most of them are unwelcome and feel threatening and quite frightening. As doors lock, or open, and floorboards creak for no reason, and the cold seeps into the house; the atmosphere within the story becomes more tense
As Mark continues to work from London for most of the week, it is Kate and the children who experience the fear and sheer terror, but Kate is never sure if she should tell Mark just how difficult they are finding things. He may not believe her, he may think that she's becoming ill again.
Can the reader believe Kate though? She doesn't appear to be the most reliable of narrators, and this just adds to the tension in the story; I was second-guessing all the way through.
Atmospheric, creative and often disturbing; Haverscroft is a splendid read. I enjoyed it tremendously and would recommend it highly
S.A.Harris is an award-winning author and family law solicitor born in Suffolk and now living and working in Norwich, Norfolk.She won the Retreat West Crime Writer Competition in 2017. She was shortlisted for The Fresher Prize First 500 Words of a Novel Competition in 2018 and published in their anthology, Monsters, in November 2018.
Her debut novel, Haverscroft, was published on the 15th May 2019 and Longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize 2019.
She is a member of the Society of Authors.
Twitter @salharris1 or author website: https://www.saharrisauthor.com
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