This is a creepy and eerie novel that I found to be an oppressive and atmospheric read revolving around a family who have financially stretched themselves to breaking point to acquire a Victorian house in the London Fields. They acquire a lodger, Zoe, who moves into their basement to contribute to their finances. Richard, Eleanor and their small children, Rosie and Isobel, and Zoe find their lives begin to spiral downward in the house. Eleanor had misgivings about the house but give in to Richard's wishes. There is a spooky and unsettling upstairs room with the name Emily written on the walls and a powerful force that does not like the presence of anyone in the room or as it becomes clear, in the house. The author gives us detailed character studies of the adults in the house, their personal histories, of their drab ordinariness, the normal struggles of trying to keep a marriage together and bringing up children, the compromises, of insecurities, and dreams lost.

Eleanor tries to do her best to clean and repaint parts of the house in the hope of eradicating the supernatural and malevolent entity of a child that is strong and pervasive. However, nothing works and in the meantime, Eleanor's health begins to deteriorate with constant heavy headaches and vomiting which eases when she is out of the house. She tries to talk to Richard about Emily but he doen't want to hear and rationalises it down to a consequence of her stress and her ill health. Richard is doing a Masters in his efforts to become an academic and a writer. He is working part time so that he can do this, but is failing. His energies become focused on Zoe as he obsessively tracks her doings and her life, routinely searching her room. Zoe feels the presence of Emily, has broken night sleeps, and, ominously, begins to sleepwalk. She tries to spend as much time away from the house as she can. She becomes involved with an artist in a relationship with another woman, knowing its not a good idea. Eleanor becomes more frightened as Rosie's behaviour changes, she bites, has tantrums, desperate night terrors and acquires an imaginary friend that is the spirit of Emily infesting the house. Isobel gets burnt and has to be taken to hospital. Driven by the need to protect her children, Eleanor is prepared to try anything even though it has to be without Richard's support.

This is a low key ghost story, a disturbed and disturbing child presence that slowly infects the lives of those in the house, building up slowly and inexorably to the ending. If you like doom laden, atmospherically creepy stories, without the heavy dramatics, then this is a book for you. It is a character driven suspense novel that kept me engaged and absorbed in the story anxious to see what would happen next. Many thanks to Pan Macmillan for an ARC.

I am a big fan of ghost stories, where things go bump in the night and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and that is what The Upstairs Room promises with it’s tale of a young family and their lodger who move into a house that fills all but one of the adults with dread the moment they walk in the door.

That dread grows when they make it to the upstairs room and find a young girl’s name scrawled all over the walls, along with drawings of birds and screaming faces. No matter how many layers of paint the owner Eleanor uses, they come through. Emily’s name isn’t just in this room though, with it’s lock on the outside of the door and scratches on the inside. Eleanor finds it behind furniture, above doors, and in dark corners. She scrubs and scrubs but can’t seem to erase them.

She also can’t convince her husband there is anything wrong. He loves the house, believes they have gotten a bargain. When Eleanor tells him she doesn’t feel well, he tells her she’s tired, when she tells him it’s the house that is causing it, he says it’s not possible. When their daughter starts to act strangely, he says it’s a phase. Clueless isn’t the word for him. Selfish is, and self-involved. I really didn’t like him if you can’t guess.

In fact, I’m not sure I liked Eleanor much as the book went on either, as slowly her and her husbands back stories are revealed and their relationship laid bare. I found her incredibly frustrating but also weak. She never stood up to her husband and the decisions she made were for an easy life, not a life she wanted – including buying the house.

There was a lot about their relationship in this book, and a lot about Zoe (their lodgers) life too. Chapters and chapters where Emily or the house didn’t come into it, and this confused me. Was I reading a ghost story or a wider piece of contemporary fiction with a supernatural element? I really wasn’t sure and, because I thought I was going to be reading one type of book but felt like I was getting another, I found myself frustrated at times. I wanted to get back to the spooky.

I would say it was about half way through when I started to feel like this. Until then, I had been completely drawn in and was enjoying myself. The tension was building, the characters developing, the aforementioned hairs standing up. Then I got lost, and I think the book did too. It seemed to meander between characters and get lost in details. When it finally got back to Emily, I almost felt surprised.

I also felt let down by the ending. I always think that a good ghost story needs to explain the why – why there is a restless soul, what was done to it etc. etc. Here I didn’t get that. I feel like it was just left up in the air with an ending that didn’t satisfy me at all. What I got, overall, was some good spooky bits and a lot of o.k. story in between with characters I couldn’t find myself caring enough for to care about the book.

I feel bad saying that because it wasn’t all bad but, for me, the negatives have outweighed the positives and I am left liking it a little (for the spooky bits) but no more than that. Sorry!

"It was there from the beginning, the day they first saw the house. Eleanor noticed the smell first."

The Upstairs Room is like a subtle version of a classic haunted house story. It unfolds slowly but that's part of its attraction, it's an in depth look at people and the way a building can affect them.

The blurb makes The Upstairs Room come across as typical haunted house fodder; happy young couple, quirky old house, mysterious presence, haunted upstairs room etc, but actually the book takes all the good points of a ghost story, keeps them, yet injects a lot more human story and mystery. It's about the house and what happened there but also about the affect on the characters and how they react, not with shrieking and running away from zombies and stuff, but looking at their lives and relationships.

The story is actually quite slow moving but I liked this as it's not all about thrills and scares.

The characters in The Upstairs Room are very well developed, I actually highlighted a few lines that stood out to me as they relate to things I have felt myself, especially from Zoe and how other people just seem to know secrets about being adults.

"Sometimes it felt like everyone knew about a secret store of money that she couldn't access."

Murray-Browne has a very realistic way of writing but also one that somehow captures the atmosphere of places and moments. especially in her descriptions of the house which can be oppressive, you can totally imagine it.

If you're reading The Upstairs Room more for the horror than a look at family dynamics, then don't worry, throughout there is a creepiness which gradually builds and it's actually very scary how the people in the house slowly disintegrate. I'm not sure it could be classified fully as a horror novel but it definitely has strong spooky elements.

There were just a couple of issues for me; one was that, while the reader really connects with the main characters of Eleanor and Zoe, I would have liked to hear a little from Eleanor's children, especially as one of the daughters in particular is very disturbed by the house.
I also felt the ending was a little disappointing, it fizzled a little bit.

However, I still thoroughly enjoyed The Upstairs Room and it hooked me in with slow deliberateness instead of the constant shock value that so many thrillers use nowadays.

My Rating: 4/5

I received a copy of The Upstairs Room via NetGalley in return for an honest review. My thanks to the author and publisher.

This is a darkly claustrophobic and atmospheric modern chiller that made me feel very uncomfortable whilst reading it. I wasn’t quite sure which way the storyline was going to go so that made me quite apprehensive about what was about to transpire and I kept waiting for a rational explanation of the unusual incidents that were occurring!

The state of the housing market is at the heart of this gothic style ghost story. It’s so difficult to get on the housing ladder nowadays that more people are renting, either on their own or in house shares. Here, Zoe moves into Eleanor and Richards basement as it helps them to afford the mortgage and renovation of their new home whilst providing her with affordable accommodation. Now I have done this in the past so understand how difficult it is to have a good relationship with the homeowners whilst still maintaining some privacy. I especially found the scenes where Zoe just eats a snack in her room rather than venture into the shared kitchen very realistic. I’ve also experienced the opposite though, when I had a lodger for a couple of years! It’s not easy for either party but sometimes there isn’t any alternative so it’s just a case of everyone having to adapt. But in The Upstairs Room, right from the start we realise that something very disturbing has happened in the house and therefore these relationships are even more strained. After moving in, Eleanor finds that the name Emily has been scribbled all over the room at the top of the house and she becomes obsessed with finding out about the previous owners and why they moved out. Has something dreadful caused an evil to be left behind or is it the house itself behind the unexplained illnesses and strange behaviours?

There is a nightmarish feel to this slow burner, with the tension gradually creeping up on you with every chilling incident that occurs. The sleepwalking and the night terrors added extra depth to that intensity. The scenes where Zoe had sleep paralysis really struck a chord with me as I have had this happen to me in the past (only once but that was more than enough for me!!) And it was the most terrifying that has ever happened to me. I was convinced there was an evil spirit sitting on my chest and even the sound of my own breathing seemed menacing – I can honestly say I have never been so scared in my entire life. So I think I looked at this book with a different viewpoint to others, understanding that sometimes your brain interprets things in a way you can’t physically control or even easily explain. Maybe my scientific brain is always looking for the rational explanation and others will be less sceptical than I am!

Nevertheless, I found it difficult to put this spine chiller down until I knew exactly where it was going to end and I wasn’t disappointed although as in real life, not every thread is finished off. The ethereal quality to the narrative means this book has remained with me for longer than I had expected so although I didn’t love it as much as I’d hoped, I did find it an intriguing and unnerving read.

Thank you to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for this ARC, which I have reviewed voluntarily and honestly.

Now I don't mind admitting I am a total wimp when it comes to horror, so I was in two minds whether or not to read this book. I did obviously, but made sure I read it in the daytime or with the lights on. It doesn't help that my bedroom is the 'Upstairs Room' in my cottage either and so far - and believe me I have checked - there are no strange drawings on my walls.

Eleanor and Richard have bought a large house that needs a lot of work doing to it. They have two young children Rosie and Isobel. They rent their basement - a lounge, bedroom and shower room - to Zoe, a local young woman who works in a nearby art store.
Despite the estate agents claims the house looks like it hasn't been lived in for a long while and whoever did live there looks like they left in a hurry. The upstairs room has walls covered in strange drawings, shapes and over and over again the name Emily is written everywhere. There are also children's belongings in the room and a locked suitcase. The door has scratches all over it on the inside as if somebody has been trying to get out whilst on the outside of the door is a large bolt. Whoever tries to enter the room is always met with a strange feeling of pressure from the other side of the door, as if somebody or something is pressing against the door to prevent entry. Eleanor also finds with regularity pebbles ranging in size lined up neatly in the room and on the pavement outside the house. The pebbles make their way nearer and nearer to the house until eventually they are lined up on the doorstep. Richard insists it is just children messing about and nothing to worry about. Eleanor is not convinced and by now she has begun to feel very unwell. She has crippling headaches and vomits constantly. Her symptoms however improve dramatically the longer she is out of the house. Her toddler daughter - Rosie - is also showing signs of being affected by some unknown force.
Rosie's temper tantrums have reached alarming levels and she has begun to bite Eleanor with a vicious force. Rosie prefers to be at nursery, going into meltdown at weekends when she has to stay at home. Then the night terrors begin and Rosie starts to talk about 'Girl', who is always to blame for any wrongdoing, mess or tantrum.

This book has the makings of an excellent, classic, horror novel. Not a psychological thriller, but a proper spine chilling, read with the lights on horror. However it seemed to lose it's way somewhat. A lot of time was spent going over Eleanor and Richard's past, how they met and so forth. None of this seemed relevant in my opinion, but the author could have been using the negative feelings and underlying tension to explain why the house felt haunted. After all it is claimed by those in the know that buildings pick up on the residents and that spirits can be unsettled by the forces around them.
Then there is their lodger Zoe. Again a lot of time is spent looking into her life, her ex-boyfriend, her Mother, her friends and her new relationship with a guy she has met through work called Adam. Again I wasn't sure why this and indeed the character of Zoe was included. Richard begins to have a fixation with Zoe, visiting her living quarters etc, but beyond that nothing appears to happen.
Zoe has had strange things begin to happen to her since moving into the basement. She wakes up feeling paralysed, unable to move as if there is a force sitting on her chest, she sleepwalks and is found by Eleanor in the upstairs room.

Eleanor tries to glean as much information as she can from the neighbours about the house and the previous owners. The only thing they all tell her is that the mother - Mrs Ashworth - always looks harassed, ill and scared and her daughter Emily was not 'all there'.

When I got to the end of the book I was none the wiser who the 'Girl' or this spirit was, if there actually was a spirit or if the house was indeed haunted. Did Emily - the previous owner's daughter - have anything to do with it? Did her illness stem from the house or was she ok before they lived there.
I felt slightly cheated if I'm honest.

However in terms of horror writing Murray-Browne excels. I was absolutely petrified reading the descriptions of the strange goings on and I did feel the hairs go up on the back of my neck a few times.
I may devote some time to re-reading this book again and I would be interested to read reviews from other readers to see if their point of view helps me understand the story further. I wonder if the background stories of Eleanor, Richard and Zoe are more pivotal to the story than I gave them credit for.

I am giving this book 4* as the horror writing is fantastic and I really think it deserves another read by me!

I don’t like horror, I don’t like ghost stories, not as books or films, I honestly chose this based purely on the beautiful cover, I don’t think I even read the blurb. It just goes to show you what a brilliant design can do, I would never have picked this up otherwise, so congratulations to Picador’s design department. Once I realised what sort of book it was I began preparing myself for disappointment but I was pleasantly surprised (or should that be unpleasantly?) by how effectively Murray-Browne's story got its hooks into me.

Eleanor and Richard have recently bought a new family home, a Victorian townhouse in East London. It's a fixer-upper but Richard is determined to make it their dream home. Eleanor is less convinced and the less-than-ideal decor and the fact that they will need a lodger (Zoe) for the basement flat to keep up with the mortgage are nothing compared to the uneasiness she feels inside the house, particularly when the upstairs room reveals the name "Emily" written hundreds of times in a childish hand. And why would anyone put a lock on the outside of a child's bedroom? From day one the house exerts an unpleasant influence over its inhabitants, most disturbingly of all on one of Richard and Eleanor's young daughters.

I found the creepy goings-on genuinely unsettling, leave-the-lights-on unsettling.
Murray-Browne manages to use even well-established ideas in fresh and unexpected way and to chilling effect. The slow build of tension as Eleanor investigates the former owners in an attempt to understand her own hatred of the house, Zoe develops sleep disorders and, most worryingly of all, little Rosie begins to act out in ways that may be a normal phase but may also be something far more sinister.

Where she really comes into her own is the clever way she enhances the (possible) supernatural by intertwining it with the real concerns and anxieties of her characters, their worries and neuroses about their careers, their families, and their life choices. The way that the otherworldly and the mundane all-too-real aspects of these lives feed into each other created believable, complex characters and a multi-layered atmosphere of tension and unease. All of characters are dealing with significant problems in their professional and personal lives, Eleanor and Richard have bought a home they can't really afford, both Richard and Zoe have quit their jobs in the hope of finding something more fulfilling. Neither is really succeeding, Zoe flitting from a temporary secretary position at Richard's old firm to a minimum-wage job in an art shop. Richard spends more time planning home repairs he can't afford and spying on his lodger than finishing the Master's intended to launch his academic career. Eleanor (poor Eleanor) is struggling to cope with being the sole wage-earner and balancing her work and her children and cannot shake the feeling that something in the house is a malign influence on her family. The melding of modern psychological drama with traditional Gothic spooky shows a fascinating insight into how belief in the supernatural can operate, latching onto anxieties and issues that haven't been resolved and projecting agency away from the self in times of uncertainty. It all worked seamlessly and it might have kept me up at night but it was as much about pondering the plights of modern existence as it was keeping an eye out for ghostly influence. (Maybe not quite.)

Eleanor and Richard and their two young daughters have just moved into a Victorian house in London, which needs a lot of renovation. In order to cover their costs, they take in a lodger called Zoe, who lives in the basement.
The house was abandoned by the previous owners, leaving some of their possessions, and also an attic room, where the name Emily has been repeatedly written in the wall, along with other images.

The scene has been set for a creepy/ghostly story, as Eleanor investigates the house and the effect it has on the residents, especially her young daughter.

Instead we get reams of back story of how Eleanor and Richard met, Richard’s thwarted ambitions, Eleanor’s mother, Zoe’s past, her new boyfriend, why she split from her old boyfriend…… and a small amount about how the house may be making Eleanor ill.
I was really interested in what was wrong with the house, and became increasing frustrated by these unlikeable characters.
There was a sort of explanation at the end, but the whole book was over-long, and in the end, unsatisfying.

Thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for the opportunity to read this book.

The Upstairs Room

Eleanor and Richard buy a four-bedroomed Victorian town house in East London and move into it with their two young daughters Rosie and Isobel. The house is a renovation project so to help with the finances they rent out the basement to Zoe, a 27 year old woman. Eleanor knew there was something not quite right with the house when they viewed it, one of the rooms in the attic had the name "Emily" written all over the walls. Not long after moving in Eleanor started to feel really ill when she was in the house and Rosie starts displaying some really aggressive and strange behaviour. She tries to make Richard see what is going on but he refuses to believe it has anything to do with the house and all she needs to do is rest. Richard seems to be a little too interested in the tenant downstairs. Eleanor just can't seem to find answers to her problem and the growing problem of Rosie's behaviour. A very enjoyable book, not my usual genre but I did enjoy it.

Very well written and full of promise, but sadly for me it just didn't get to the knock out punch.

Loved reading this book, couldn't put it down.
A great read, got my interest straight from the start. (Hate books that take a while to get into).
The story starts with a young family buying a new house in need of revenoration , they want to buy it as a family home but also as an investment. The husband being more keen than the wife. But straight away Eleanor , the wife, feels a strange atmosphere within the house and doesn't like it at all right from the start. Her husband however is so keen she lets him persuade her its a good idea.
As soon as they move in things start to happen. **Spoilers**Eleanor find writing on the walls, things are moved, then she starts to feel ill whenever she is at home and her daughter starts to behave out of character.
You think this is going to be a supernatural novel about ghosts and strange presents but its more than that. It's about the thoughts and feelings of the characters about their relationships, their life choice. Including Zoe the lodger they get in to help pay the mortgage. (Thought the husband was going to have an affair with the lodger, but he doesn't, thank goodness, would have so been disappointed )
I liked how it wast just a ghost story. The author managed to blend in stories of the personal lives of all the characters, mixing their negativity of their personalities in with the negativity of the house. Was it them or was it the house??
It kept me interested though out, wanting to know what would happen next.
The ending is good with the author resisting the urge to end with some big ghostly finish. It's a believable ending and a believable book.
A great read will look out for this author.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A creepy house with a child's writing covering the walls of one room is the setting for this mystery. Eleanor is never as keen as her husband Richard to buy the property and as strange things happen to her she becomes even more convinced that they made the wrong decision. The life of their lodger Zoe is interweaved with their story as she seeks to find both a meaningful relationship and a fulfilling job, but she too becomes affected by the house's past history. A hauntingly good read!

This is the story of a family- Richard, Eleanor and their two young daughters who together with Zoe, their lodger, find themselves living in an increasingly eerie Victorian house in London. The walls are marked with peculiar writing, illness and behavioural problems begin and strange visions appear. But like all good ghost stories though, it turns out that the interior lives of the characters are an integral part of tale. Even before the problems begin in the house, Richard, Eleanor and Zoe are all struggling in their own ways. The author Kate Murray-Browne skilfully demonstrates how each person’s innate traits and their separate histories cause them to respond in certain ways to the unravelling of their home.

Throughout the book, the author tries to strike a balance between a slow ramping up of the feeling of dread while gradually revealing more about the character’s natures and backstories. For the most part, I found this successful. At the start all the characters come off fairly shallow and bland- each one appears to drift into the situation with a certain detachment and predictability. Richard is fixated on creating his Pinterest perfect designer house. Eleanor goes along with it despite her initial uneasiness in what seems to be a lifelong theme of accepting trade-offs, like in her marriage, to achieve what seems safest and easiest. Zoe comes across as unmoored, making a series of bad relationship choices and landing in their basement room as a lodger as the only housing option available to her to enable her to continue working in a London art shop despite having no clear artistic abilities herself. Everyone seems to recognise that they have limited options to respond to the growing malevolence within the house but what the author depicts are people who are inherently somewhat passive to begin with. It works, if only as a way to explain why anyone who stay in an environment which quickly unfolds into a catalogue of low grade horrors. The downside is that as the characters become more complex and interesting, they also emerge as not terribly sympathetic or likable.

For me, the story worked best when Murray-Browne focuses on the supernatural element. She does so with great effect and there were one or two parts of the book where I was genuinely creeped out. Without giving too much away, I can say I would have liked a different way of resolving the problem at the end and I was left with a number of unanswered questions about the cause of the haunting. Ultimately it did not detract from my overall enjoyment of the book. At times I was completely riveted and found it hard to put down. I’d recommend it as a very readable ghost story.

A new house – this should have been an exciting time for Richard and Emily and their two young children. They take a lodger, Zoe, to help pay the mortgage. However, the house takes on a atmosphere of its own and Emily becomes ill, Zoe feels strange and Rosie, the eldest daughter has violent tantrums and keeps seeing a little girl.
This is the story of a house with an unexplained presence which takes over a family. Finally something has to be done! But is it the end?

When I first read the description -- and saw the cover -- of The Upstairs Room, I was intrigued. Despite the fact I don't read much supernatural fiction, I'm a big fan of thriller and mystery, and I definitely enjoy a good ghost story. The book is very well written and was easy to read. I was very quickly drawn in, eager to see what would happen at Litchfield Road. Sadly, about halfway through, it started to get quite bogged down with intimate details of the characters lives. Whilst so much detail provided character development, it felt like a ditraction from the story I really wanted to read. Such in depth coverage of Zoe's love triangle felt largely unnecessary as well. I would get excited again whenever we returned to the story of Rosie, the upstairs room and the strange happenings in the house so was happy that there was a substantial return to this element for the ending. The ending itself was quite good, it certainly left me wanting more.

This book was a great mixture of contemporary fiction and paranormal horror (horror seems a bit of a strong word - but it's sort of accurate just don't expect anything extreme).

We follow Eleanor & Richard as they move into their new home, a Victorian pile in London, along with their lodger Zoe.

The book explores familiar themes in contemporary fiction - worry about careers, never being able to afford a house, stale and messy relationships and their lives, past and present, are explored in intimate detail - but what makes it interesting and ultimately more interesting than that is the slight horror element. The house doesn't deliver the dream home Eleanor & Richard had hoped for, but rather makes their life unbearable.

There are several scenes that leave the reader sometimes wondering whether the paranormal activity is real or imagined which was rather well done - does it have a realistic explanation or is it something more sinister?

I really enjoyed this - it was well written but very easy to read. When I had to put it down, I didn't want to and I was always eager to pick it back up. Minus one star for it getting a bit repetitive - some of the scenes between Eleanor & Richard were a bit samey and frustrating (but I suppose they were meant to be...)

Recommended!

A macabre, chilling and unsettling debut novel, The Upstairs Room is a contemporary take on the classic "young couple move into a new home that turns out to have something sinister lurking upstairs".

Eleanor and husband Richard have found their new family home for themselves and their 2 young daughters. They know it will be a struggle financially to buy in a desirable area of London so they settle for an older property that "needs a bit doing" well frankly it needs quite a lot of renovation and redecoration but they're young and enthusiastic and it can be a project for them to enjoy together.

Bit it becomes more of a money pit than they imagined, and in order to keep their heads above water they rather reluctantly sub-let the basement to a young woman lodger and into the periphery of their lives comes Zoe. However living in this gloomy and outdated home soon makes Eleanor in particular begin to feel distinctly uneasy, in fact she begins to be frequently ill and fears its the house affecting her health.

Plans to renovate are soon shelved and even redecorating the dark and outdated decor is beyond their means and the rooms remain gloomy and the unnerving scribble which adorns in particular an unused attic bedroom with the name Emily scrawled repeatedly together with disquieting drawings has to remain. Eleanor begins to find this writing concealed elsewhere in the house too.

Whilst Eleanors life crumbles and Richard grows ever more distant, obsessed with planning and pointlessly plotting the elaborate restoration project which seems doomed to never happen. Their lodger Zoe's life seems to be taking a turn for the better, she gets a new job, OK it's not very stimulating and her lodgings aren't quite the chic city apartment she dreamed of but when a new man enters her life and romance seems likely, she feels quite settled ... or does she? Is the house somehow influencing everyone who lives there?

It certainly seems to be having an adverse effect, even on the little girls, whose increasingly difficult behaviour becomes almost the final straw for struggling Mum Eleanor.

All the way through the book is a creeping sense of unease and terror and the puzzle of whether it is in fact the house to blame, or the people within it?

Its creepy and scary and gives you that lump in your throat which gulping hard just can't quite shift.

I did consider the ending a little rushed and not quite as explosive as I hoped but the whole book is filled with creeping menace and subtle insinuations and its a real page turner that's sure to entertain and really makes you think how you'd react in some of the situations. The subtly flawed characters and the macabre location combine to create an engaging work of psychological horror.

Thank you Netgalley and the Publisher. This is not normally the sort of book I read as do not like scary books but this was excellent and had a great plot. Good read.

For people of a nervous disposition or like me who read this the very weekend when you go to see a friend who's renovating a house....well just be warned. I used to write on the walls as a child, there was even some scribbles of the house I went to visit recently. So you can imagine my horror at reading this book! I was suitably chilled and thrilled and freaked out.

The entire novel is set up like a normal house move, a lodger, and a house that seems to dislike the new people. Eleanor is the one to get to the truth of the matter - her good for nothing husband is too busy wanting to get busy with the lodger. Never mind his poor wife going out of her mind.

This worked really well for me as the set up was brilliant but the characters didn't quite fit if that makes sense. Eleanor didn't seem with it and was a bit too keen to have sex when she thought something from the afterlife might be watching! The house was the main character for me and that chilled me to the core. It reminded me a bit of the movie The Skeleton Key as the set up with that room...

Jeepers creepers.

First of all, the good: I thought it started off really well, it managed to be pretty engaging throughout, and the characters were also well-developed and interesting.

But.

It seemed to me like a psychological drama with a vague backdrop of the supernatural/horror, whereas I was expecting the opposite. The supernatural element seemed to take backstage in favour of various tangential storylines that seemed to be unnecessary. The story gradually lost momentum as it progressed, screeching to a halt with that supremely unsatisfactory, anticlimactic ending, making me feel like literally nothing had happened. I mean, I wasn't exactly expecting a ghost to come out and go on a crazy chainsaw massacre, but at the same time I wasn't expecting the horror element to fizzle and die either.

A slightly unnerving novel which I found to make slow progress and then seemed to end when it had only just got going.
The story focusses on a Victorian townhouse on Litchfield Road, London. New owners Eleanor and Richard with their two young daughters can hardly believe their luck when they are the only family who put in an offer for the property, which they do despite a very unsettling top floor room with the words Emily scrawled over the walls and ceiling, along with macabre sketches of birds.
Zoe is taken on as a lodger to inhabit the basement rooms and so they all settle into a new chapter in their lives. None of the characters are truly happy with their lot in life which I found slightly depressing. Zoe seems to not know what she wants from life - picking the wrong men and leaving behind a perfectly good but dull well paid job. Eleanor seems to have given up her dreams of pursuing a career a long time ago and is making ends meet whilst husband Richard is taking a part time job in order to work on his Masters - something that he seems to get no further on with as he whiles away his extra time dreaming of a house makeover, which he can ill afford.
As they settle in Eleanor begins to feel nauseous and ill, her eldest daughter Rosie begins to act very oddly and Zoe begins to have terrible nightmares and sleepwalks. Richard does everything he can to ignore the goings on, trying to find every excuse he can for not blaming it on the house. Things move about and lines of pebbles appear on the doorstep. Chapters are dealt with moving between the key characters, their relationships and their feelings in connection to the house and despite strange events are not as scary as I had expected.
The story moved slowly to a conclusion which I found to be sadly a bit of a rush to reach a conclusion.