Atmospheric, dark and chilling, an awful lot is happening in The Haunted Shore so you'll need to pay attention to this gripping thriller to be able to appreciate it fully.

Sadly lacklustre compared to Neil Spring's earlier ghost stories - I found elements of the plot interesting but it just moved too slowly.

This latest round of reviews is brought to you under the heading “Fancy A Quickie.” I am not reviewing erotica I am grabbing an opportune moment to get down and dirty and rip back the covers to expose two books and tell you about the time we spent together in bed.

Yup, these are books I read in bed during nights I struggled to find sleep. Part of the reason I struggled to sleep was down to the fact I was enjoying these stories. But when I finish a book in bed I don’t review it there and then and all too often the review remains unwritten. Until now. Two quick reviews follow.

Neil Spring always tells unsettling stories and The Haunted Shore was no exception. Though one element I found particularly unsettling was not from a supernatural thread (which is what I had anticipated) but from Lizzy’s self-destruction at the start of the story.

I won’t share what forces Lizzy to leave the city and move out to the wilds where she will be with her father but suffice to say it was a dilemma which the author depicted well and made me anxious and frustrated for Lizzy. I was annoyed with her character, then I was sympathetic and then I was rooting for her to overcome the situation. So before things really begin to kick-off I was already invested in this story.

Lizzy is alarmed to discover her father is in ailing health. He relies heavily upon a carer and the pair have a relationship which Lizzy is struggling to accept and to fit around. The more time Lizzy spends in the company of this stranger who is keeping her family functioning the greater her suspicion and distrust grows. The tension grows chapter by chapter.

As Lizzy adjusts to life in the remote countryside and to get away from the toxic atmosphere in the house she spends time walking the deserted shorelines. It is there she meets a neighbour who has warnings for her, caution is advised but clearly all is not as it may seem. The first inklings of troubles to come are seeded.

Neil Spring always delivers the chills and The Haunted Shore builds up nicely to the point things start to become disconcerting. It kept me guessing where the story was heading and with a chiller that’s always a totally open ended range of possibilites. I’ve read all of Neil Spring’s books and they never fail to deliver.

Very atmospheric, I loved the setting, but I found some of the storyline muddled and couldn’t always believe Lizzy’s actions. I would have liked more focus on the hauntings. The spooky bits were really good, but I would have loved more of them.

A great winter read! The unusual dynamic / relationship between carer and daughter added depth to this novel and the sense of place was satisfyingly eerie

I really want to visit Orford Ness. The vivid descriptions of Shingle Street make it enticing for a supernatural suspense reader like myself. Not only that, there are hints to the Lighthouse at Orford Ness having had supernatural goings-on. I mean lighthouses are pretty fascinating, right? They're a literary focal point too, but not every book has the added (modern) renovated Martello tower to live in. I had to do a cursory google whilst reading to find that Martello towers are shortish and stout. I would love to see one in real life, particularly where the protagonist lives in during the story after abandoning London. What is truly sad is that the lighthouse was decommissioned in 2013. It has begun to be dismantled after enduring harsh weather in July 2020 (as if anything else bad didn't happen).

The intensity is amped up by a family dispute and family illness, sometimes the scariest stories are drawn from real life with the most Machiavellian sibling rivalry and behaviour. It was engrossing to see the tension between Lizzy and Hazel. The guilt of deploying the care of a family member to an outsider. It supported the development of the plot.

While writing this review, I can't stop thinking about how the lighthouse is being dismantled. When literature students on post-millennium Fiction 101 modules won't have a chance to visit the lighthouse Neil Spring has done the building justice in his descriptions. For that, I will add a star! Neil Spring always brings a paranormal touch to his thrilling stories. His forte is plot-driven suspense, for me, that's what makes them so engaging and enjoyable to read.

I am grateful to the author, Neil Spring, the UK publishers Quercus and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book before publication. It will appear on the book review section on Jenifun.co.uk once I have perfected my Pinterest board of Martello towers to share with you all.

Lizzy gets a phone call from her brother. Her dad is in a very bad way and he needs help. Right when lizzys world is turned upside down. She goes straight to her dad. When she arrives she finds her brother has hired an live in carer. Something about her just dosent sit right. Are her instincts correct, or is she just imagining it all.


What an absolutely amazing book!! A certain character was driving me insane, I was getting extremely annoyed and wound up. I kept having to remind myself it was just a book, its not real.
So many different twists. As soon as certain characters were introduced I was trying to figure it all out. Each time I thought I had, I was thrown in a different direction. Highly recommend

The Haunted Shore follows Elizabeth Valentine, Lizzy, a successful woman in her mid thirties with a partner that loves her and a high paid PR job in London. She loves her life, and is ready to settle down into married life with her partner and have some kids. Unfortunately for her, her life is about to spiral out of control. Lizzy's partner is also her boss, and when he removes her from an important project she turns to the one place shes always found comfort, online gambling.

Without realising what she's doing Lizzy drains her bank accounts in a spree of online Blackjack. Panicked and desperate she uses her corporate credit card to try and win her money back; but alas, her addiction prevents her from stopping before it all goes wrong. With £80,000 stolen from her work and gone to the wind, Lizzy is fired from her job, loses her partner, and is being hounded by shady characters who all want their money back.

Unable to see what she can do to get herself out of this hole her addiction has dug her she climbs onto the edge of a bridge and is about to end her life when she gets a phone call from her brother. It turns out her father is getting sicker, that he's struggling to get by, and her brother needs her to help. Grabbing hold of this sudden lifeline with both hands Lizzy travels back to her childhood home to help her father.

A former architect, her father is hiding away from the world in his converted Martello tower on a stretch of the near deserted Shingle Street, a small patch of coast in Suffolk. Lizzy arrives at this remote home to find her father in worse condition than she though, her brother moved away to live with a younger woman, and a strange carer, Hazel, staying in the tower. Back in her fathers life and determined to help him, Lizzy not only has to worry about the debt collectors on her trail, and continually locking horns with Hazel, but there's also mysterious figures on the beach at night, and strange noises that she can't explain haunting her too.

The Haunted Shore is a book that's full of atmosphere, one where you feel the location seeping off the page into you as you read it. The remote and dreary shore of Lizzy's childhood home is dark, creepy, and full of atmosphere, and it never once lets up. The oppressive nature of the winter weather, as well as the cold and isolated feel of the tower means that this is a place where Lizzy can never find rest, where she never feels relaxed or fully safe. The result of this is a woman who is barely keeping a hold of herself throughout most of the book.

Lizzy is a character that feels very real in a lot of ways, for starters she's incredibly flawed, and makes so pretty awful mistake like anyone would. But the thing I like about her most, that I really appreciate from Neil Spring, is that her gambling addiction isn't treated as a failing on her part. Sure, there's a time at the start of the book where she's blaming herself for doing it, but she soon starts to address it like any kind of addiction, something that is a part of her, something that she has to fight against because it's not just someone making the conscious choice to go and gamble, but an insidiousness inside her that keeps trying to push her towards it. Society seems to understand that addiction is often something that someone can't help, when it comes to things like alcohol or smoking, but other addictions are treated as some kind of moral failing or weakness on the part of those who fall victim to it, and gambling is one of these. To see it treated with the respect and sympathy it deserves is wonderful, and helps to normalise the idea that it's a sickness, not an active decision for gambling addicts.

Whilst battling with this illness, Lizzy is subject to further mental strain in the form of Hazel, a woman who you just can't help but hate. There are times where she feels completely genuine, where you believe that she's a kind woman, there to do what she can to help a vulnerable older man. You come to believe that perhaps Lizzy is just overreacting, and her feelings of suspicion and hate have no grounding in reality. Other times you completely agree with Lizzy, you believe completely that Hazel is a nasty, awful person, one who's there to cause harm. The back and forth on the view of this character, on the way both the reader and Lizzy feel about her is great, and really speaks to how well written the book is. I won't say which of these is right, whether Hazel is good or bad, because finding that out yourself is half the fun.

Neil Spring also manages to weave the ghostly parts of the story into the narrative in great ways, and whilst you never feel that this supernatural element is completely gone thanks to the atmosphere, there are large sections of the book where it takes a back seat to the human drama going on. The two stories intertwine together very well, and both lead to some shocking revelations and surprise conclusions.

Overall I really enjoyed The Haunted Shore, it had a compelling narrative with some great twists and turns, and some really creepy, spooky moments in their too.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting musician Thomas Dolby, one of my teenage heroes. This was as part of a small tour he was doing to show people a film he had made about Orfordness lighthouse in Suffolk, an abandoned landmark on the British coast which was adjacent to a disused Atomic Weapons Research Base, itself surrounded in strange stories and mystery.

The area is clearly ripe for inspiring tales that are creepy. Coincidentally, this area is also the setting of Neil Spring’s The Haunted Shore, although the story takes place not around the lighthouse (recently demolished, sadly), but a renovated Martello Tower on the same stretch of coast.

From the publisher: “When Lizzy moves to a desolate shore to escape her past, she hopes to find sanctuary. But a mysterious stranger is waiting for her, her father’s carer, and when darkness falls, something roams this wild stretch of beach, urging Lizzy to investigate its past. The longer she stays, the more the shore’s secrets begin to stir. Secrets of a sea that burned, of bodies washed ashore — and a family’s buried past reaching into the present.

And when Lizzy begins to suspect that her father’s carer is a dangerous imposter with sinister motives, a new darkness rises. What happens next is everyone’s living nightmare . . .”

Lizzy Valentine is a bright young thing who seemingly has everything going for her – great job in London, well paid, nice flat – but when her life all falls apart, she returns to the hamlet of Shingle Street to live with Clifford, her architect father who lives in a redeveloped Martello tower on the Suffolk coast.

Upon her return she finds that her brother Colin is no longer living with her father but instead, living in the tower with her father, there is Hazel, a woman who is Lizzy’s father’s carer. This is a surprise, a change that is unknown to Lizzy. Lizzy does not get on with this stranger and even less so when Clifford is admitted to hospital after a stroke.

Other strange things become apparent – Clifford’s bank accounts are empty. Is Hazel an imposter taking the family for all she can get, or is she a genuinely caring professional caring for an adult in the throes of dementia? And then there’s the strange things that seem to happen around outside the tower at night…



Neil has made a habit of writing novels with unreliable narrators – his 2013 novel The Ghost Hunters, based on Borley Rectory (and reviewed HERE) was another one, as too the 2017 sequel The Lost Village (reviewed HERE). With this in mind, it should not be too much of a surprise that whilst seeing things from a third-person narrative focused on Lizzy, the reader is not sure that what they are reading is accurate or even real.

Is the plot about Lizzy slowly becoming unravelled, the consequences of a high-stress job in London? Or is it something more elemental, even supernatural? The author does well to keep us guessing along the way as things get stranger and stranger. Events become more strange and increasingly fractious as the book continues. The descriptions of the Suffolk landscape are effective in evoking a bleak wilderness, by turns remote and desolate. To create that solid connection with reality, Neil uses real places to make the reader feel that the situation is real. The Morello towers, for example, built for Britain’s defence in the Napoleonic Wars, are still there to see.

The plot and the pace are deceptively readable. Neil manages to set the scene well and make Lizzy’s deteriorating psychological situation seem possible, as well as make the reader want to find out what happens next.

There are lots of homage moments here, I think. The strange carer in the desolate house reminded me a little of Mrs Danvers in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and anyone who has read M R James’ Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad or A Warning to the Curious will know how memorably eerie the Suffolk landscape can be, something which Neil does well to evoke. There’s even a possible touch of Nigel Kneale’s Stone Tapes in there too, with the idea that physical objects and places seem to absorb past traumatic events.

The ending revolves around a big reveal which on the whole works, although I did get the feeling that it wrapped things up rather quickly and was a little like that James Bond-plot point where the villains explain everything just before the end.

Nevertheless, overall, The Haunted Shore is an effective page turner that reads easily and keeps the reader’s attention. A good one to read on a dark and stormy Hallowe’en night!

Having grown up in Suffolk near Orford ness I was really looking forward to reading this book and it didn't disappoint. Full of eerie atmospheric happenings it gripped me from page one to the very end. Highly recommended

I read this for a blog tour.

Well this was suitably weird and creepy.

I've read a few books now set on Orford Ness, which is a former military base on the Suffolk coast, it was a secret base and not declassified til the 1970s so lots of stories and rumours persist about it.

This book dips into some of the rumours and mysteries surrounding the area, now a bird reserve, as well as mentioning some of the wider Suffolkian stories.

The Ness is remote and I imagine quite eery, especially in bad weather, making it the perfect setting for this story of regret and revenge.

Lizzy has made a serious mistake at work and having been fired she flees back to the family home, a converted tower on the Ness. Her father is suffering from dementia and her brother has hired the rather unpleasant Hazel to look after him.

Lizzy takes an instant dislike to her, and as events start to spin out of control, she becomes more and more afraid of Hazel and the amount of control she has over her dad, Cliff.

This book was really sinister and I could imagine all the strange noises and creepy things Lizzy thinks she's experienced, the desolate shoreline slowly revealing its secrets.

The ending has so many twists and turns that I just couldn't believe what was real and what the characters were imagining, which I think is the point.

It was really, really good and perfect for the short days and gathering nights of autumn. Plus, my husband, a Suffolk native, is going to take me to see the Ness for myself, so I can soak up the atmosphere for myself.

The Haunted Shore is an eerie, atmospheric read which is part psychological thriller and part ghost story.

Firstly this book had some of my favourite ingredients in it with the old tower seeming deliciously creepy from the start and with the added enjoyment of a creepy, rather sinister housekeeper as well as some unexplained supernatural activity which just added to my enjoyment. I soon realised I would enjoy this book and was able to just relax (well as much as you can with this book anyway) and get absorbed into the story.

Unsurprisingly this book has a very tense and creepy atmosphere to it which slowly increased throughout the book until it becomes almost unbearable. I didn’t know much about the supernatural reputation of Shingle Street so enjoyed learning a bit more about the stories. I thought the author did a fantastic job of blending fact with fiction to make a very gripping, entertaining read.

The main character Lizzy was an interesting main character who I took a while to warm towards. I found her a bit whiney and annoying at the beginning of the book but after her arrival at her childhood home, with everything that happens there, I actually started to feel quite sorry for her. Despite being quite scared at times I found I had to keep reading to find out what happens and make sure she is ok.

Overall I would definitely recommend this scary, atmospheric book which would make a great Halloween read. It’s a story that gets into your head and I often found myself jumping at noises in real life whilst reading. It is perhaps not a book to read just before bed as you might find it too scary to turn off the light!

Huge thanks to Milly Reid for inviting me onto the blog blast and to Quercus for my copy of this book via Netgalley.

When Lizzy loses everything due to her gambling addiction, the call from her brother regarding her father seems to be the answer to her problems.
She returns to her childhood home to find that her brother has kept many things from her, including that he is not living at home and has employed someone called Hazel to be a carer. Soon Lizzy experiences unexplained occurrences that she can not understand.
I love bleak landscape, atmospheric novels so I was immediately drawn to this when I read the synopsis and it did portray this well. The hardest part for me was connecting with the characters. I really didn’t care for any of them and it was more a story of what was happening around them.
That still, it was interesting and picked up the pace towards the end.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy to read.

After her life in London unravels spectacularly Lizzy returns to her family home on the Suffolk coast to lick her wounds and try to do the right thing by her father.  The old man hasn't been very well lately and Lizzy's brother has employed a woman, Hazel, as a carer for their father. But from their very first meeting Lizzy feels that there is something not quite right about the older woman.  In fact there is something very wrong on Shingle Street and the area in general, something very wrong indeed.

I am personally very familiar with the setting of this book.  It is a beautiful, wild place, right on the coast, and a wonderful haven for wildlife.  But when the weather is not at its best it is not difficult to believe the legends and rumours about that stretch of coastline, especially with Rendlesham Forest just inland, with its own stories and legends.

An incredibly atmospheric and, at times, tense read, possibly the author's eeriest to date. The characters are all fantastic, the good, the bad and the downright awful.  Another fantastic, engrossing read from Neil Spring.

Many Thanks to Net Galley, Quercus book and the author for a chance to read and review this book. All opinions are expressed voluntarily.

Neil Spring’s The Haunted Shore is a book that better be read in one sitting with all the lights blazing ON!

A Darkness Is Rising!

Eerie and mysterious, the insidious quality of the desolate murkiness that hangs over the book cannot be described by any word that I write here. The Haunted Shore begs to be read for all fans of supernatural thrillers coz it is not just the ghosts and unexplained phenomena that causes the chills but the Machiavellian sneaky drama that enfolds throughout the story.

Elizabeth Valentine, Lizzy is running from her mistakes and the call from her brother Colin to return back home to Shingle Street in Suffolk is like a manna from heaven. The much-required peace and shelter that she wishes for, never materializes as Lizzy comes to terms to the extent of her neglect of her family affairs and the very sly care-taker Hazel who has made herself home.

The psychological element of the story muddles the plot brilliantly coz Lizzy as a character is not someone whom one can instantly like but as the story progresses and the reader becomes enmeshed in unravelling the tangle of secrets that surrounds the Martello tower and the forbidden military area called Orford Ness, an island of secrets, I began to root for Lizzy and her solid friendship with Bill.

The author’s use of the bleak and stark shoreline with rumors of atrocities during the world war is masterly and to know there are bits of truth in the story sends cold shivers down the spine.

Thoroughly terrifying and chilling, The Haunted Shore is a must read for all fans of psychological supernatural thrillers.
Highly recommended.

This review is published in my blog https://rainnbooks.com/; Amazon India, Goodreads, and Twitter.

This is an extremely chilling psychological thriller full of suspense and laced with paranormal experiences - just right for Halloween. The tale takes a while to build giving the reader an in depth view of the characters, who aren’t particularly likeable. The location adds to the spooky storyline increasing atmosphere and tension to the eerie happenings. I found myself glued to the final chapters, wanting to know what would happen next. The conclusion was so unexpected with surprise twists that no-one would guess!

I've enjoyed Neil Spring's supernatural thrillers since I read The Ghost Hunters. I love his blending of the paranormal with psychological chiller. In The Haunted Shore, parts of the story have been inspired by the rumours and WW2 legends centred on a remote stretch of coast in Suffolk called Shingle Street.

Although Lizzy grew up in an old Martello tower right on the beach, she has always felt uneasy about the place. After losing her job in London (and owing a huge amount of money to her dodgy ex-boss), she is forced to return to her childhood home. She agrees to look after her invalid father while her elder brother takes on a new job. Unknown to Lizzy, her father's health (both mental and physical) has deteriorated significantly and her brother has hired the sinister and belligerent Hazel as a housekeeper/carer. If that wasn't enough, almost as soon as Lizzy moves back into the tower she begins hearing strange noises and glimpses ghostly figures on the beach. Is she imagining it or is the stress finally beginning to get to her?

Well, this frightened me half-to-death! The end, in particular, was super-scary - no sleeping without the lights on for me! I loved the unusual setting and the way Neil wove the real-life history of the area into the story. His descriptions of the tower and the beach were incredibly atmospheric, and Lizzy was an engaging heroine. I loved the way she was able to conquer her own personal demons too.

An excellent read for Halloween, particularly if you like chilling psychological suspense mixed in with your ghosts!



Thank you to Neil Spring and Quercus for my copy of this book, which I requested from NetGalley and reviewed voluntarily.

I discovered Neil Spring’s books last year and I was hooked as I loved his mix of thriller and paranormal, the creepy atmosphere and the great plots.
This book is no exception and, even if it’s a bit less creepy that the other, it’s a highly entertaining and gripping read.
It kept me hooked since the first pages and I was enthralled by the bleak atmosphere, the great characters and the growing tension.
Lizzy is not a likeable character but I got to like her and we can read about her changing and making amends for the mistakes that destroyed her career and forced her to change her life.
She’s facing the unknown and she’s facing some terrifying experiences.
The characters are well thought and I found them interesting.
I loved the world building, the description of the places and the paranormal side that has the right creepy factor.
The author is an excellent storyteller and i found this story enthralling.
I can’t wait to read the next book by this author, this one is highly recommended.
Many thanks to Quercus and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mien

3.5 Stars

Neil Spring is a new author to me, although he has a successful back catalogue of books and a TV production in his wake.

I was attracted to his book, The Haunted Shore, due to the supernatural aspects included and because it is set in Shingle Street, which I have visited. When I took a trip there, although it was September and a nice day, the place was completely empty, and it certainly has an unusual feel to it. You could well imagine the place having a history and some echos of the past lingering there.

The reader is carried along wanting to unravel the secrets of the past that relate to the main character Lizzie, her father and his carer, Hazel. I have read several books recently that I would describe as more character-led. This one felt more plot led and In my opinion, some of the incidents that occur felt a little contrived to make the plot work. Perhaps, because I enjoy a character-led novel, I felt the beginning was a little rushed as we get to find out about Lizzie and what triggers her return to Shingle Street from London. This almost felt like the opening scene of a TV production where we are quickly shown something to establish a reason for the move and as a prompt for later to come action.

That said, I enjoyed the tension that builds in her father's house based on Lizzie's relationship with Hazel and the bizarre noises that she hears and the figure she sees on the beach. I also liked Lizzie's friendship with Bill, and his backstory and the path of shells was intriguing. In many ways, Bill is the character I could relate to most in this book.

The book works its way towards a final crescendo, and the pace really quickens in the last quarter. I found myself rushing to reach a conclusion about what had really happened.

All in all, I enjoyed the book and the strong setting and historical element. I've slipped it down from 4 stars to 3.5 stars due to wanting a little more character development and for the plot actions to be a little more subtle. However, I'm sure it will be a popular book and enjoyed by many others.

Many thanks to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy of this book. I wish the author well on publication date on the 15th October.

The Haunted Shore is an atmospheric thriller, full of twists and turns. Lizzie returns to her childhood home in a bleak part of Suffolk after a huge fall from grace in her high flying PR career in London. Her elderly father is looked after by a woman called Hazel, who Lizzie has deep reservations about. When Lizzie starts seeing and hearing things she cannot explain, she feels that she is losing her grip in reality.
I found this to be a slow burn novel, and did not particularly take to the characters of Lizzie or her brother. Lizzie’s was also quite a stressful storyline and I didn’t really have much sympathy for her.