The Carrow Haunt by Darcy Coates – A Book Review

Blurb:

Remy is a tour guide for Carrow House, a notoriously haunted building. When she’s asked to host seven guests for a week-long stay to research Carrow’s phenomena, she hopes to finally experience some of the sightings that made the house famous.

At first, it’s everything they hoped for. Then a storm moves in, cutting off their contact with the outside world, and things quickly become twisted. Doors open on their own. Seances go disastrously wrong. Red liquid seeps from behind the wallpaper. Their spirit medium wanders through the house during the night, seemingly in a trance.

Then one of the guests dies under strange circumstances, and Remy is forced to consider the possibility that the ghost of the house’s original owner, a twisted serial killer, still walks the halls.

But by then it’s too late to escape.

Author: Darcy Coates

Publisher: Black Owl Books

Genre: Horror

Series: N/A

Pages: 372

Release Date: 26th March 2018

My Chosen Format: Kindle

My Rating of ‘The Carrow Haunt’: 4 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon, Audible

Review:

Darcy Coates is, without a doubt, the Queen of the haunted house novel (although it’s not the only type she writes). When I feel in the mood for horror, but can’t decide who or what I want to read, Darcy’s books are easily a go-to for me. She’s got a great knack for storytelling and a very consistent output as far as her work goes. She’s also the only author whose newsletter I’ve ever signed up for. It’s rare I go out of my way to keep up to date with bookish news, but with her stuff I just have to.

Fanboy moment over.

The Carrow Haunt features Remy, a haunted house tour guide, who is offered a blank cheque to oversee a week-long stay in Carrow House. The party features variety of people including a medium and a paranormal investigator with a Youtube show.

Throughout the group’s stay we delve into the murky past of Carrow House and the assortment of people who have lived and died there. Each passing day sees the activity rise and rise, along with curiosity as to why their benefactor wanted to do this venture in the first place.

I felt the pacing of The Carrow Haunt was consistent and just the right amount of ups and downs to keep the reader turning the pages. I thought the characters were engaging and gelled in just the right, and wrong, ways to keep the group intriguing.

Unlike most books where you either get overt or a more laidback style of horror, this book features a good blend of the two. I’m less of a fan of the overt stuff in any horror and, no matter much I enjoy a book (in this case very much) I always feel it comes off as a little cheesy. But it’s the kind of cheesy I willingly signed up for and it was done well enough that I kept turning the pages rather than grimacing.

It was very clear and easy to picture what I was reading. I always like to have a good visualisation when reading horror as it adds to atmosphere. I certainly had no issues getting very vivid mental imagery of the characters and surroundings whilst reading through this.

As far as the ending goes, it all came together rather nicely. It wasn’t how I would have liked to have seen things end, but it isn’t my book so I don’t get to make that call. The author certainly achieved what she was aiming for by the feel of it.

It also has one of my favourite covers. Very striking!

The Carrow Haunt was a spooky read for the Halloween season … but a mixture of things have kept me less active than I would have liked. Hence why there’s been a couple of horror reviews back to back, narrowly missing out on spooky season.

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