The Toll House was a creepy, atmospheric book. It travels back and forth through time, allowing the story to unfold at a good pace.

You are able to imagine Kelda’s terror, experiencing all they are in the house but having nowhere else to go and not being able to protect her son.

I recommend The Toll house, I raced through it as I couldn’t wait to see what happened to Kelda and her son.

The perfect curl up on an autumn night with a cup of hot chocolate and give yourself goosebumps read. This is a proper ghost story. I'm not usually a horror genre person but I love a really good ghost story.

Kelda has moved into the Toll House with her young son Dylan. It's a quaint, tiny 1700s house with plenty of history, out in the middle of the countryside. The perfect place to get some peace and quiet right? But when Kelda uncovers a plaster death mask hidden in the walls of the house she unleashes something dark that threatens to shatter her country living ideal.

It's 1863 in the Toll House. A young wife is struggling to give birth. Her anxious husband sends the midwife away, insists she fetch the doctor, against her better judgement, she agrees.

There's a proper narrative to this spooky story, not just the bumps in the night. I really liked Kelda's character. Her fierce love for Dylan and her determination to make this new life work for them. The story travels back and forth between the present day and the 1800s and the house seems to have a presence of its own. It seems to have soaked up the pain of everyone who's ever lived there and it almost emanates from the walls.

A thoroughly enjoyable read for all your ghostly needs. You'll feel like someone's watching you, like someone wants you...

The Toll House is such a chilling and spooky read and I highly recommend it if you enjoy a good ghost story. I’m sure this is a book I will return to when Halloween comes around another year. The plot unfolds at the perfect pace and jumps back and forth between “Now” and 1863. It is perfectly creepy and just the page turner to read as the nights begin to close in. A great debut from Carly Reagon and I’m looking forward to her future work.

I received an advance copy of this book from Little, Brown Book Group UK, Sphere through Netgalley, however this did not influence my unbiased honest review of the book.

Creepy, spooky and quite the page-turner, I really enjoyed this haunted house tale with its restless spirits and unexplained shenanigans. Kelda and her young son Dylan move into an old cottage, largely as it's the only place Kelda can afford and after a difficult few years they need somewhere to settle. However, that proves difficult and what starts off as unnerving soon develops into something more chilling. In 1863 the cottage on the Old Turnpike Road was a working Toll House, the tollkeeper Joseph inhabited it with and his pregnant wife Bella. He tells the tale from his time so we get a real sense of past and present. There are some good twists and I read it quite quickly as I had to know what was going on! Definitely an author to look out for, highly recommend.

As the nights draw in something creepy becomes an increasingly appealing reading choice and this debut novel might very well fit the bill.
In 1863 the cottage on the Old Turnpike Road, Stonebridge, was a working Toll House lived in by the keeper Joseph Walton and his pregnant wife Bella. In the present day it becomes a new home for Kelda and her six-year-old son Dylan. They chose the house out of financial necessity but from their initial viewing Kelda senses it needing her and confuses this with homeliness. The house is, in fact, haunted and the past and present clash. The nineteenth century is covered largely by a first-person present tense narrative by Walton with a third person narration for the present day.
It takes a while to move from gently unnerving to anything more chilling, and as in many ghost stories, it is the child, Dylan, who bears the brunt whilst Kelda cannot believe anything is seriously amiss despite increasing evidence to the contrary. It does build nicely as both Kelda’s own past and the distant past of the Toll House come back to haunt her. Her desire to live a life no more demanding than work, childcare and maybe meeting the perfect man on a dating app is certainly thwarted by the history of her house.
The novel doesn’t add anything new to the haunted house genre and it was more subtly creepy than out and out chilling as far as I was concerned but plot and characterisation are handled well and there’s a solid sense of history throughout. There are some good twists, especially towards the end. This could very well be a popular choice of bookshop browsers in the month leading up to Halloween.
The Toll House is published by Sphere as a hardback and e-book on 6th October 2022. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The perfect book for an autumn afternoon spent curled up with a cup of tea, I believe. Atmospheric and wonderfully spooky!

The Toll House is the perfect autumnal/winter read, I would of loved to of been curled up next to a roaring fire with the wind howling outside as it would of enhanced this atmospheric novel, the twists and turns just kept coming and I thought all the characters were well written and apart from the creepy ghost, I would love to live in the little toll house.

I do love a ghost story and this one certainly did not disappoint. It was spooky and chilling and absolutely perfect for the cold, dark evenings.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group Uk for the ARC

I finished this a couple of weeks ago and have left it to see if this novel stayed in my head. The answer is yes, it flips back and too from the past horrors that happened in the Toll House to present day. A great ghost story which is ideal for this time of year. The book starts innocently enough but you find yourself reading just one more page. It blends seamlessly from past to present with present mirroring the past horrors. Well written with you feeling as if you are right there watching the action unfold.

I received an E-ARC with a request for my honest review.

This creepy book follows Kelda and her son Dylan as they move into an old Toll House. Kelda is hoping for a fresh start for them both, but something doesn’t seem quite right with the house.

After a year, they are settling in, and Kelda has a new market research job. She suddenly finds a death mask hidden behind the wall, and the unusual and odd occurrences start to become more frequently.

She starts to think they need to move away from the house, but an unexpected visit from her sister prolongs their stay, and more secrets are revealed.

Is there a supernatural presence in the house? What do they want from Kelda and Dylan.

This story is really creepy, and I liked the dual timeline, where you got to read about the history of some of the occupants who lived in the old toll house.

The secrets revealed about the characters in the present just add to the confusion of Kelda and make the storyline that even more intense.

I loved the mixture of genres this book has and it was very well written too. I will be looking out for further books by this author.

Overall, a creepy and eerie story with a touch of historical fiction where the dark history of an old toll house is revealed.

Wow! This is the perfect book for Autumn evenings and Halloween.

When Kelda moves into the toll house with her young boy, she's hopeful of a fresh start in the countryside but it's not long before the house starts to give up its strange secrets and the former occupiers make themselves known to her... we are taken from the present day back to 1864 where we meet Bella and her husband and learn of their fate and how this relates to the new owners of the house.

This had me on tenterhooks and I finished reading at 5 in the morning! This is prooerly creepy at times and I can imagine being scared witless if I read this in a creaky old property in a storm! Highly recommend.

I received a copy of this from #netgalley in exchange for my review (thank you @netgalley and @littlebrownbookgroup_uk 😊)

I was excited to read it, I LOVE a spooky tale and this one sounded super creepy, a perfect start to the autumn season. Unfortunately, this just didn’t quite hit the spot for me. It’s a fairly typical haunted house story in that someone loves in to an old and/or creepy house for a fresh start and then weird things start happening once they’re settled.

It’s told through a dual narrative, past and present, which is usually a winner for me. However there just wasn’t enough going on in here to grip me, no proper action or edge-of-your-seat tension, it’s a book I found easy to put down mid-chapter and come back to later.

There were a couple of unexpected revelations that came to light towards the end - I won’t give away the spoilers but I will say one of them elicited more emotion from me than the other!

Overall this was an easy read, atmospheric at times but not enough to grip me or have me turning the lights on at night! Having said that, I think this would be perfect as a kind of intro to horror book for those not keen on seriously scary stories, a kind of ‘horror-lite’ perhaps?

This story started off creepy and chilling but turned into less spooky and more overdramatic. Reagon's writing for brilliant expect at times the characters were forced and dull and held no regard.

I enjoyed the book but it has to take something really spooky and haunting for it to stick with me and i don't believe this did which is a shame because the writing is promising.

Gosh, but, this is creepy! A house with a history that seems to be haunting the son of a young mother who recently moved there. The writing really pulls you in and it’s a spooky, ghostly, chilling read.

Kelda moves into the Toll House with her son and despite feeling she is being watched, feels hopeful that this is a positive new beginning for them both. Dylan, however, appears to be regressing as he speaks of a woman beckoning him from within his bedroom. So, Kelda begins to research the house history in the hope of finding answers. The storyline follows Kelda and Dylan as well as the history of the house.

A v good, creepy read. Perfect for a fireside thrill.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown Book Group for the opportunity to preview.

Enjoyable and unsettlingly spooky ghost story. Whilst I didn’t quite buy everything, and questioned some of the actions taken by the lead character, I was genuinely invested in the outcome.
The covid fever may have played a part, but I was freaked out on occasion reading in the dark and into the night - just what you want as the nights are drawing in

Deliciously creepy. A modern day ghost story following the classical recipe that fans of the genre would expect. I loved that it didn't make excuses, the clash between logic and belief works well and despite not believing in ghosts/spirits that haunt their previous abode, I'd definitely feel afraid to go the bathroom in the middle of the night, if I were to reside in the Toll House, hahahahaha!

This ghost story is…okay. There’s quite a bit of atmosphere, and I felt a sense of the house as a real location, to the point where I could draw you a floorplan of the layout. But the story is solidly middle of the road. There’s no real original ideas, and the pair of revelations at the end feel unearned and unnecessary - in fact they’re a little frustrating as if the author had leaned into them earlier the book it might have felt a little fresher. Some of the secondary characters just fizzle out, and there’s one plot contrivance that made me winch a bit. That said, there’s nothing really wrong with the book, and I enjoyed the couple of hours I spent with it, but ultimately it’s a competent entry in the genre and that’s all.

I’d heard good things about this one so I was really looking forward to it.

The story is set around a young woman and her child, starting a new life with a new home - the old Toll House, but with every other chapter going back to the story of the man who worked and lived there as the toll collector, so we get to know him as well as the new owners

It’s an excellent read, a classic ghost story, creepy, a little bit frightening, and it just captures the atmosphere perfectly.

A really enjoyable read for dark cold nights…

My thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown Books for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review

Well this was chilling! Brilliantly tense and creepy right from the start, it's the perfect read as the nights draw in.

If I hadn’t been reading this on a Kindle I would definitely have followed Joey Tribianis advice and put this book in the freezer.

I was definitely pulling for Kelda as it was clear she was a mother struggling on her own who only wanted the best for her son but she was saddled with a haunted house, a terrible boss and a dodgy admirer! When it came to The Toll House, she was certainly braver than I would have been in her situation. I would have been out of that house like a shot!

The writing was great and I would have read this much quicker but I could only read it in the daylight!

Huge thanks to Net Galley and Little Brown for the chance to read an early copy

A chilling and spooky read perfect for the autumn season.

It's a slow build, the tension mounting with each chapter, and the past and present timelines only help to build the tension and the fear factor.

You won't want to read this one in the dark if you hope to sleep.