I received a digital advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Holy creepy read! This was such a dark story. I loved and the horror aspect of One by One. It began super slow, but picked up and got really dark.. Really quickly. One of the things I found most interesting about this book is that it is written from the perspective of a 10 year old girl who really has no grasp on what exactly is happening around her. I will admit, I had a hard time believing that it was really a 10 year olds mind that we were set in. I wouldn’t call this a page turner, but it definitely kept me entertained. It was very cliche, it had a very ‘Amityville’ feel to it. A normal family moving away into a creepy house with a dark past but I am a sucker for haunted house stories, so of course I jumped right in this one too.

Despite not believing we were inside the mind of a child, I did really enjoy Gillespie’s writing style It was super descriptive without giving away any of the plot.

This was a solid horror/thriller and absolutely a must read for your 2019 spooky season!

Alice is a ten years old girl who together with her parents and older brother moves to the new house. The house is bigger, older, surrounded by forest and completely different than her old house. No one besides the father is pleased about moving in there. They were happy with the old house but as the father wanted to change something in their lives to fix the situation they are in, everyone agreed with him. Alice has a hard time to settle down and call this place her house. Her only reason to try is her father who is very excited about it.
First days are going by quiet and without any problems until they find an old drawing on the wall. The drawing portraits a family that looks just like her: mother, father, son, and daughter. The only difference is a dog on the picture since they have a cat. They decide to leave it be as it must be a drawing done by the old family’s children. The game changes when after few days of absence their cat is found dead and they found a recent painted black X on the dog.

Parents don’t want to believe their kids that none of them has done it just to scare the rest of the family. Alice, on the other hand, starts to suspect that something needs to be wrong with the house. One day she finds a book in her room that appeared from nowhere, which turns out to be a diary of the girl that was living here before their family. It wasn’t the weirdest thing that happened in this house. The real nightmare begins when her family members start disappearing one by one.

My thoughts:

I honestly thought it will be the same story as all the horror movies I watched and that’s how it looked to be for the more than half of the book. The family moves to the haunted house and weird things start to happen. Nope, I am sorry to say that but it’s not a story like this and I am very happy about it. The story kept me in the dart ¾ of the book and surprised me more than I expected.

Let’s start with the characters. Alice, the youngest and the protagonist in the book, is kind of a loner who most of the time daydream. She is closed for most of the people but tries to open more on her family. Her parents aren’t perfect, but they love their kids and tries to give them a life they deserve. Her father starts to act differently because of the stress that is a result of all the things that happens in the house. I think it’s only because he wanted to fix their family, give them a new start and a better life. With the time it turned out to be harder than he thought. Her brother Dean is an easy-going teenager who seems to care only about himself but with the time we can see that he cares a lot about his little sister and parents. However, her mother Debra is one of my favorite characters. I don’t know even why she just made me like her in the beginning and it stayed this way.

The story isn’t the most unique one however the ending was more than original. It was brilliant. I fell for it and couldn’t stop reading the last 50 pages when the main action happened. For these 50 pages, I am more than happy that I requested this book and finally read it. Exactly for this ending you need to read this book right away when it will be published. If you like mystery and horror books you will enjoy it.

As I don’t have much time during the day, I mostly read this book at night. It wasn’t the best choice of the time of the day for this book. I was running to the bathroom before going to sleep because I suddenly was afraid that something is around and will kill me. Don’t get me wrong, I love horrors but when you read a good one, it just stays in my mind and I can’t even look in the mirror because I am scared something will be behind me. As funny and scary it is for me, I still love to get into this late-night dark mood.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for providing me this copy in exchange for an honest review. I enjoyed this book a lot and I can’t wait to read more books written by D.W. Gillespie.

Nothing like a good haunted house story just before Halloween!! This book is a creepy read, you start it thinking it’s a straight horror story with haunted houses and ghosts and all that jazz. As you delve deeper into the story you delve into the darkest parts of the human psyche and man is it quite a ride!

The beginning was extremely slow and I had a bit of a problem with the context of what was going on in a 10 year olds mind. The wording and ideals didn’t follow the vocabulary a standard child would possess. After you get past the first half of the book and the diary mysteriously shows up in Alices room the story takes off like a train wreck barreling towards you. Fear Emanates through the entire family, who can be trusted? Who should you believe? Who can save you except yourself? You will have to read on to find out

This was just okay for me, I just found Alice a little unbelievable as a 10 year old. I wished the tension and creepiness continued through out the whole story. I would read another of his books.

If you like stories with an edge, with a creepy house and a dark history, then this may well be the book for you. This is the story of Alice and her family who are planning to start a new chapter in their lives as they move into a new home. Her father, Frank, is excited, her mother, Debra, and brother, Dean, much less so. For Alice, there is just something about the house, something that she can't quite put her finger on that both thrills her and fills her a sense of fear. And, as the story progresses, it appears she was right to be afraid as the house nurses a dark past, secrets that Alice is soon to discover, and that could cost the family everything.

From the very start of the book you get that developing sense of foreboding. This is not a restful family home, it is a place mired in tragedy. Behind it's bizarre, side-facing exterior lies a house that could optimistically be described as a fixer-upper. It screams of a dark history and the author has done a great job in setting it up as a kind of creepy and unsettling place, with a myriad of corridors, dark spaces and unusual features that would put the chills in anyone, never mind an overactive ten year old mind such as Alice's. You know from the outset that something bad is bound to happen. It has been presented perfectly as one of those houses with the Bates Motel, Amityville kind of vibe. Nothing about the place screams family home, it only screams 'Don't turn out the light ...'

This is a slow building story and it is not really until the latter part of the book that the really dark stuff begins to happen. The first half is really about establishing the main characters, creating that unbalanced and isolated feeling that is essential to driving the chills through the rest of the book. This is done well - the creaking floorboards, the heavy weather front, the fissures that start opening up in the family unit. The tension creeps into the relationships and the story, and as dark and twisted things start to happen, the pace also starts to pick up.

This story is told in third person, largely through the eyes of a ten year old child - Alice. She is a great little character, a child who perhaps sees and understands things far more than someone her age should. I really liked the character, her inquisitive nature, and her wide eyed wonder. There is something about her though, and I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, that makes her appear much older than a ten year old. More mature. Sometimes the way she speaks and acts does not appear in keeping with someone hovering on the precipice between birthday that involve large inflatables and makeover sessions. She certainly has to find the strength within herself towards the end as she becomes the central focus of the action.

Although this is billed as horror, for me it was somewhere between that and a mystery or suspense with the potential undertones of the supernatural. You are never sure whether it is a family madness, possession or something otherworldly that is happening within the walls of that house. It takes a lot to scare me though, and I did feel my pulse pick up a little towards the end when the real threat becomes apparent. That said, whilst this may not be a full on scare-fest, it does contain dark themes, none explored in a graphic way, but with enough information shared to leave the reader in no doubt about what happened to one the house's former occupants, Mary.

An entertaining, chilling and intriguing read that held my attention right to the last page.

What I liked was the fact that a juvenile was a hero. Fast paced, good writing and plot.
The book took me for an emotional ride. Loved it.

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher who provided an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.*

Book: Thank you for choosing One by One, may I take your order?
Me: Yes, hello, I'd like one adult male author awkwardly writing from the perspective of a ten-year-old girl, and a large side of clichés, please.
Book: Would you like to add on a completely incomprehensible description of the layout of the house the story is set in, for just a few brain cells more?
Me: Yes, that sounds lovely. Can you also add some cheese to that?
Book: Oh, it comes with cheese. It's very cheesy.
Me: Delightful!
Book: Your total comes to two days spent on a book that you absolutely cannot recommend but thoroughly enjoyed anyway.

ONE BY ONE is the second novel I have read from author D.W. Gillespie (both from Flame Tree Press). While the first had a good storyline, this second novel felt much "tighter" in execution. The pacing was more steady, and my interest for the storyline never waned.

A family--Frank & Debra, the parents, and their two children, Alice (10) and Dean (15)--are forced to relocate from their home in the "city" to one in the country. A house that was "a STEAL" according to Frank.

". . . The woods . . . pressed in from all sides. There were secrets here . . . and to most people, that would be a bad thing."

I really enjoyed this storyline, as a sense of impending dread steadily increased, yet never quite revealed all of its secrets at once. This gave me time to think about each revelation, and come to my own preliminary observations.

". . . It was just an explanation, the kind of thing you turned to when there wasn't a satisfying answer . . . people did that to stay sane because if you started looking for what-ifs, you'd go crazy . . . "

There were a couple of things I never did get used to though. The children referring to their parents by first names alone was jarring for someone brought up to address their parents as "Mom and Dad". It was a bit confusing at first, trying to figure out who was who, and why there was no "familiar" connection. In the end, I had to chalk it up to simply the author's style, and my own personal experiences, not meshing.

". . . this was what being an adult was all about. Lying to yourself and those you love even when the truth was the only thing that seemed possible."

The other thing that bothered me a great deal was Alice's personality. It was much too mature for a ten year old girl with an "ordinary", loving family, I felt. It often seemed to me that she spoke/thought more like an eighteen-year-old woman, instead of a child. This may be in part because I have my own children, and the differences really stood out. Other than these two issues, I found the story to be original, and well paced all throughout.

". . . I think a lot about what a smile is, especially when you don't mean it. It's a mask. Something that hides the truth . . . "

Naturally, the house had a backstory, but this was written in such a way that the things currently happening were more important to me than the past . . .

". . . If any excitement about the house remained, it had faded . . . been replaced by something much closer to pure fear . . . "

While I didn't particularly connect to the parents, the relationship between the siblings felt authentic, and helped carry the story forward tremendously. Despite my feelings on the level of maturity Alice showed, she was a fantastically complex character that I really enjoyed following.

". . . A few extra dollars on the electric bill was a small price to pay for her safety against the unnamable things that hid in the dark . . . "

The psychological changes far outweighed the physical in the first three-quarters or so of this novel--something I feel helped insure my undivided attention. When there remains the questions of "if" or "what" in the face of some event--making it so you can not be one hundred percent sure of anything--the story becomes much more of a challenge and an "addiction" to me.

I simply have to read more!

". . . everything I know is pointless in the face of what I feel . . ."

Overall, this novel contained more than enough elements to keep me rapidly turning pages. I loved the plot, psychology, and mysterious episodes that began from the start. While I did have a few issues regarding the mental maturity of a ten-year-old girl, and relationship to her parents, in the end they were easy enough to overlook. A gripping tale from an author I will be eagerly watching for future books by!

Recommended.

A normal family moving into a strange old home with a dark past--of course weird and creepy happenings quickly ensue!

Haunted house stories are easily my favorite kind of read. If we're going to get really honest, even the most basic, predictable haunted house tale will still end up being a good time for me, but this story is anything but predictable. Now it has all the familiar tropes (really, all of them), but they are done so so well, and Gillespie uses that familiarity to trick you into feeling comfortable before taking things in a completely unexpected direction that I found incredibly satisfying.

One of the highlights for me was the story being told from the perspective of 10 year old Alice as she observes her family adjusting to their new home and they ways it changes them. Writing child characters that feel believable, but are also compelling, is tricky, but you wouldn't know it here. I can't praise Gillespie enough for perfectly capturing the stage of girlhood where they are very much still a child, but start becoming aware of more adult issues that they don't quite understand yet, and feel torn between childhood and their impending puberty. I was surprised not only that that kind of insight was shown, but just how well it was done. Alice is smart, capable, and intuitive, and I loved following her as she tried to understand what happened in the house's past to solve what was happening to her family.

While Alice is the star, I easily connected to each character in different ways, even Mary, who we only know through her diary. I couldn't tell you what any character really looked like, but I felt a deep understanding into them and their motivations, and I'll take that over hair and eye colors any day.

The story itself hits every single beat you anticipate from a haunted house story, and gave me all the dread and tension I desired, but it's hard to go into much more of what I loved about it without risking spoilers. This is one best experienced knowing very little going in, but I will say, don't trust any of your theories while reading it! One by One is a perfect book for my fellow haunted house junkies, but even more perfect for those that think they're all the same.

I loved the hell out of this book, and I couldn't have asked for a better introduction to an author that is new to me. Highly recommend!

Frank Easton is thrilled to leave his ordinary house and move his family into a huge fixer upper that he got on the cheap. He seems to be the only one who is excited. His wife Debra is used to his butterfly chasing as she calls it. Frank is always ready to follow one whim after another but this latest dream is putting more than the usual strain on their marriage. Their son Dean would rather be in their old neighborhood, and daughter Alice tries to see it as an adventure but it isn't long before she realizes something is not right in their creepy new home. This was a highly atmospheric novel with a perfect setting. There was not only the sinister feeling house to contend with but also the woods and a snowstorm added heft and weight to the suspense.

Sometimes all you need is a spine chilling haunted house mystery and this book certainly delivered – Alice and her family move to a new house and soon family members start disappearing one by one.

I loved the author’s writing style; it was very descriptive and completely set the scene without ruining the build up of tension. Things gradually got creepier and creepier until we’re hit with an unexpected and nasty conclusion.

This story shares a lot of vibes with the Shining: a family trapped in close quarters as they begin to behave in unexpected ways. The story itself is totally different but I got the same feeling of claustrophobia and dread watching an ordinary family fall apart, questioning how much is caused by supernatural influence and how much is just people being people.

I did feel that Alice was a little bit too precocious for an 11 year old and was a bit disturbed by how few fucks were given about the family cat, but otherwise I loved everything about this book – especially that the story has left me with questions. The best books are the ones that stick with you after you finish the last page!

This book isn’t particularly gory, though it does have its moments – the horror mostly lies in the suspense and the way the characters interact with one another. I highly recommend this book as an addition to any good horror collection.

This book was more than the typical haunted house story I was expecting. It was creepy, with twists & turns I wasn’t expecting. I really enjoyed this read. I’m looking forward to reading more from D.W. Gillespie!

One by One has the intriguing build up of a classic haunted house story that segues into something much more terrifying. Told through the eyes of a 10-year-old girl, Alice, her family has recently moved into a strange new home with a mysterious past.

There are many classic horror tropes - a mysterious diary, a hidden shack in the woods, a family member acting strangely...All meld together into something fresher but no less brutal than what you might have been expecting to happen.

It's an interesting wee book, a fast read, that has undertones of The Shining and will appeal to lovers of horror and thrillers alike.

This was quite a creepy read and was well written but it did take me a while to get through as It was quite slow going initially and I just wasn't feeling it.
Then about two thirds in things just exploded and this was what saved this for me the last third of the story without that input I was just not that invested.
So this is told from the daughter ten-year-old Alices POV and she's a bit of strange duck.
Her inner voices are particularly loud in her head almost like they are completely separate entities.
Alice herself has an almost grown-up persona much older and wiser than her young years.
So the whole family move into this quirky fixer-upper from there previous cookie-cutter home and after the discovery of the wall-pictures, the whole family start to spiral as the panic and sense of unease start's to set in and spread almost like a virus.
This story rather than relying on shock scares instead sets the scene building an ambience that is both spooky and suspenseful.
Where you're waiting for something or someone to jump out of the dark and scare you half to death.
As I Said earlier slow-building but got there, in the end, I'm also not exactly sure why I had such trouble connecting with this I just did.
I also wasn't a fan of the epilogue thought it was a tad long-winded.
This one had both negatives and positives for me but the writing itself was spot on and fine this was more a case of it's me, not you.
I voluntary reviewed a copy of One by One

One by One is the story of a family trying to maintain itself in the context of a new and mysterious house. Told from the perspective of the 10 year old daughter, Alice, you experience the family dynamic and the curiosity of their new home through her eyes and interpretations. The misunderstandings, musings, and imagination of a young child tint every event of the story which colors the entire narrative with additional clarity or muddiness as Alice agonizes over her familial relationships and tries to come to terms with who she is as a person and where she belongs.

The tension builds when Alice discovers a drawing of a family, like hers, behind some old wallpaper. Her overactive imagination gets the best of her as she analyzes the potential implications of the similarities to her brother and parents and the crude picture on the wall. When “X”’s begin to appear over characters in the picture and family members inexplicably vanish, Alice’s theories seem less crazy after all.

The premise was immediately compelling and the story remained interesting throughout. Unfortunately, as the mystery began to unravel during the climax of the story, a lot of the tension seemed to release a bit too early. Ultimately, the answers provided by the plot twist weren’t quite as satisfying as the tale might have implicated in its early portions. I still felt compelled to finish the story and my interest never fully waned, but I was left merely satisfied than fully awestruck.

Thanks to Netgalley, Flame Tree Press, and D.W. Gillespie in exchange for an honest review.

A pretty disappointing read. The POV of the little girl felt too odd and weird and most the things she narrated felt too forced and made me question why the hell was I even reading this book. So I had to abandon it after a couple of pages itself.

The Easton family moves into an old, giant house they bought at dirt cheap price. Alice, the youngest in the family, is thrilled to move in there and explore it. Her joy soon turns to dread when she discovers a painting of stick figures depicting a family of four on the wall of the hallway ……. just like her family. The rest of the family brushes it off, but Alice is intrigued and scared by this painting.

One by one, the members of her family start disappearing, which is followed by a X marking that member in the crude painting in the hallway. Alice must unearth the macabre mystery behind this old house before she becomes the next victim.

Sounds scary enough? Well, it did to me. The first part of the book, where the family members keep disappearing one by one, is spooky. It kept me on the edge, and I was anxious to find out the mystery behind their disappearance.

Appearance of a never-before-seen diary in Alice’s bedroom, the creepy feeling of someone always watching you, the glimpse of a grotesque face on Alice’s window at the dead of the night, a glimpse of pink; snow, snow everywhere—all these images establish an unearthly atmosphere, ripe for a ghost story.

Apart from the images, Gillespie also plays with Alice’s mind. As the family members keep disappearing, suspicion rears its ugly head among the rest of the inhabitants. One by One is as much a portrait of the sinister as it is of a family itself. What makes a family? What breaks it? What makes family members stick together? What drifts them apart? During adversity, how strong are the bonds in a family which are already under strain?

However, the problem is One by One has been described as a horror book, but it is actually a psychological thriller. So, I was disappointed by the direction that the story took in the second half.

I was waiting for the ghost to appear; what I got instead was its pale imitation. In reality, human beings are far scarier than ghosts, which is the message the author was aiming for. Unfortunately, once the culprit behind the disappearances was revealed, I failed to be scared by that person. The writing in the latter part of the second half wasn’t powerful enough to evoke any fear or disgust towards the antagonist. This resulted in a tepid climax, in my opinion.

While this book did not work for me, that may not be the case for others. Gillespie’s One by One is not a run-of-the-mill horror book. It is grounded in reality, which will appeal to a wide section of audience, apart from horror and mystery fans.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me a free eARC of this book. I opted to provide an honest review.

This was a very disturbing story and provided plenty of chills. I finished it in one night and kept the lights on all night. The family seemed to be very close-knit and loving until the haunting episodes started, then they began to split apart. I recommend this book to anyone who likes entertainment of the spooky variety.

One by One- G.W. Gillespie

This one was creepy as hell. Goosebumps, fear reading, on edge, a little jumpy, I LOVED it. I may have some messed up dreams tonight but that’s alright.

This is a page turner. As most horror stories do, this one also begins with a family moving into a new house. The house is described enough that you feel like you are in it with Alice and going through these horrors with her. Unlocking the mysteries of what has taken place in that house is a ride with an ending I did not see coming!

This was such a good and creepy read, I completely fell in love with it! What is often the problem with horror novels is that, at some point, the story is inevitably a bit less tense – while short stories manage to keep us readers on the edge of our seats during the whole experience. One by One did not suffer from that. Quite the opposite, really, because I was clenching my teeth anxiously all the time while reading it! The author manages to leave us guessing, and panicking for the protagonists. From the cover (not displayed here since it wasn’t included with the early copy), we can guess pretty easily what is going to happen to that cute family, but the creepy atmosphere had me completely hooked and on the edge as I was reading it just before going to sleep! I’m also impressed by the ending of the book. I very often complain about book endings (sorry), but this time around, the plot twist was seriously good, and the book concluded on a touching and very realistic note. An all over great read. Now I’ll have to hunt for the author’s other books!