Adam Nevill

Beware of your neighbors. They’re exactly who you think they are. That’s essentially what this book is about.

When a young, financially struggling family finds a fixer upper in a wealthier countryside neighborhood, they dismiss the previous owner's suicide to achieve the dream of being homeowners. But it’s a challenge to live next door to the most perfect estate on the street, especially when the elderly couple living there has prejudices and standards and snooty rules. Grudges build show more quickly, and window watching exposes creepy WTF suspicions and revelations that build with every new peek. There is something terribly wrong with the neighbors, and their poisonous ways are seeping into the new family's back yard.

I have witnessed (and been through) enough cringeworthy neighbor confrontations and unintentional glimpses to understand the increasing madness that our MC Tom experiences. He's driven to that madness because of one niggling disagreement. Then another. And another. Each, building on the other toward a horrific end.

This book is weird. And funny. And heartbreaking. And splattery. A worthy folk horror read. show less

I don’t read a lot of horror these days, but the premise of this novel caught my attention and overall it’s pretty good. The opening scene will have anyone who’s read Rebecca comparing it to du Maurier’s magnificent introduction. As a matter of fact, I read it right after and it is an obvious paen.

After that there are some good strong hooks - dolls, taxidermy, a mysterious house, an unusual job, old trauma/murder, mental illness, 2 big (forced) moves, the creepy abandoned show more “special” school, a “mad woman in the attic”, and a mute and sinister housekeeper. What homage to Rebecca would be complete without her?

My initial impression was that Catherine only got her job so Edith can torment her. Of course there has to be more to her hiring, but it takes a long time to be revealed. At first Catherine is a sympathetic character because of her treatment at the hands of bullies all her life, but after a while I started to wonder why she was such an easy target. Oh yeah, it’s because she’s spineless. Can’t or won’t ever defend herself. Oy. When she starts acting the horror movie bimbo I lost my patience with her.

The whole of Edith’s character is unpleasant and unnatural. Nevill plants the seeds in our darkest imagination over her origins and intentions. Is she a product of incest? Enchanted taxidermy? When she shows Catherine Mason’s workroom full of wicked tools, foul chemicals and partially constructed grotesques it is really squirm inducing. From there though, things degenerated into too much too fast. The superannuated village peopled by what seems to be living corpses. Their bizarre rituals (an homage to The Wicker Man?) and whispered innanties. Leonard’s role in all of this morphs from savior to sinister. The children in the school; part memory, part revenant, part ensouled marionettes. It’s a bit overwhelming and you just have to immerse yourself in the insanity and not try to look for reason. There are unanswered questions that will bother people who are too literal to look for answers on their own, but for this kind of thing it works. I could see myself reading more of Nevill’s work. show less

I consider this a gold standard in folk horror that seamlessly blends the old ways with todays world and how there’s always a way to pass the torch.

Nevill creates a claustrophobic tangle of darkness and debris within the massive historical home of Flo, the silent dementia patient Jess is tasked to take care of. The clusters of darkness and things that creep around behind Jess’ back was some of the hair raising writing I’ve encountered in a long time. Levitating and wall crawling show more scares the hell out of me.

This is feminine rage and revenge magic, elemental and forceful. It was stunning. Having an elder woman as a point of power was truly gratifying. I loved everything about this book. show less

Iä! Iä! The Black Goat of the Woods is alive and well and living in northern Sweden. Good for her, not so good for the four English blokes on a midlife hiking trip who decide to take a shortcut through said woods.

I enjoyed the first part, in which the boys are hunted and harried through the primeval forest, stumbling across a creepy old house and an even creepier old church as they go, more than the second, which is basically captivity horror with a trio of deeply irritating human captors. show more But Shub Niggurath, horrible but sympathetic insofar as she is last of her kind, is back with her fetid breath, bellowing bovine nostrils and cloven hooves for a rip snorting final act.

Nevill builds a powerful atmosphere of cosmic wrongness and creeping doom in this tale of a camping trip gone all sorts of Pete Tong. show less