This slow burn, atmospheric, historical fiction horror is as deep as it is compelling.

The has an exceptional historical atmosphere and horror aspects that develop slowly but ramp up quickly at the end. What helps the former is the epistolary aspect of the novel. It’s told as a diary style, and the balance between providing enough info that you’re not missing anything but the details also not feeling didactic (and breaking away from the sense of it being an actual diary) was excellent. The narrative voice also fit the character quite well - Ada overuses exclamation points, meanders a bit, and convinces herself of things, but it felt intentional. When the book needed to, it pared that stuff back, but when it was helping build Ada’s personality, it suited the structure.

I will say one thing about the book - it is very very slow burn. If you enjoy books like this - which I do - you will enjoy the lead-up to the ending quite a bit. And while it is slow burn, it’s never dull or dragging. The story is constantly moving forward, it’s just that there isn’t a lot of horror for quite some time and there is a lot of well, walking around and conversations where people never say what they mean. Then again, if there were more abject hostility or scary stuff, it wouldn’t have made sense for Ada not to leave.

As with all horror stories it seems, Ada is not only dealing with the potentially supernatural, but trauma of her past. Her sister is recently deceased, and she was forced to leave her previous teaching post due to … reasons. What I really liked was how this reason seems very obvious from the start but then it twists it in a way that I did not expect (or at least there’s a twist on a twist I did expect).

Ada herself is a likeable character. She’s a pretty average woman - smart, brave but not brazen, and quite lonely. While she clearly wouldn’t be opposed to a partner, she really just wants a friend. Her loneliness has her reach out to anyone who will accept her, even if it is disagreeable to the couple who allow her to board in their house. What’s interesting about them, and the rest of the town, is that everyone harbours secrets. Some are weird, some are sad, some are benign. The town, the people, felt real and I was entranced by this novel the entire time. What was also realistic, and disheartening at times (which I think was intentional), was the way Ada was complicit in the same systems that are holding her back. In order to keep her job, the only thing keeping her from having to return to her abusive father is to ensure the children - especially the girls - in her classroom behave according to expectations - something she is also constantly badgered about by her father. She accuses a girl of immoral behavior for kissing a boy, for example, and the boy doesn’t even get a talking to. This felt realistic to the time period, because Ada hasn’t been introduced to any alternative forms of thought. While she understands the societal expectations that bind her, she doesn’t even realize she can combat them. Or maybe she can’t, due to reasons outlined before. In this way, the novel shows how sometimes we just go along with stuff, even if it is self-defeating because to make a stand would be futile and worse for us.

If you are fond of horror novels that explain everything, you will not get that here. In truth, I’m not even convinced what I read was even “real” and I think there are multiple interpretations of the ending. Ada is a very unreliable narrator, which is part of the fun of the novel - so how much of the events is the “grey dog” and how much is it her fraying mind? To further complicate this, there is a passing reference to the Plato’s Cave allegory, which reinforces both the grey dog as a being who Ada’s eyes have been opened to - a reality hidden from most people - and as something else entirely. The reference is not just “the shadows we see and perceive are not what reality is” idea (to put the allegory in its simplest terms) but also because one of Plato’s “higher levels” (of reality, in terms of philosophy) is natural science, something that Ada is very much into and comes up again and again in the book. The more I think about this, the more I think that the cave wasn’t just a passing comment in the book to show Ada is well-read, but was supposed to direct our opinions about the ending. You could read it as Ada being brought to a higher level of being. You could also read the ending at entirely face value and enjoy it. You could also read it as a statement on women’s repression generally or the repressed queerness of Ada. It could be all of the above. Or none?

Either way, it was a satisfying ending 100%.

In terms of creepiness, I’d give it a 6/10, but this is more an atmosphere horror than a horror-horror. In truth, I’m very much into this sub-genre. I like being scared, sure, but I also just love being brought so strongly into a setting.

I very much enjoyed this book and highly recommend it!

I had no idea what to expect going into this one. Well, okay, I had a bias. This book takes place in 1901 and follows a school teacher in a small country town. I expected this book to feel slow, to read slow. It didn’t. I devoured this, I think it took me maybe three days? And at least on NetGalley it was nearly 400 pages! Gish’s voice for Adie is just so compelling.

Her voice would have to be—the book is her journal. And Adie sure has a lot to say. This woman has been through it. From the start, you know she’s lost her sister. You also know there is some form of secret she is keeping. Secrets are one of those things that can make or break a book. Sometimes it genuinely does not make sense for a character to be so cagey. But a woman in 1901 writing in a journal? Yeah, I’ll believe there are things she isn’t comfortable writing. Until things start to change.

Adie’s adjustment to her new post and her new town is not a smooth one. She makes friends with the right people, but in the wrong way. That leads her to becoming friends with the wrong people. And to clarify, these right and wrong judgements are by the standards of the community and the time. Not Adie and certainly not me. Also obvious pretty early in: Adie is a lesbian. Watching her struggle with her feelings made me just want to give her a hug. But she wasn’t as oblivious to it as I originally assumed.

In fact, it is safe to say nothing about this book went as I originally assumed. This book spiraled and it went dark. Like, really dark. This book bucked at its reigns and tossed convention off its back. I could not put it down, and I could not have guessed how it ended up. I really don’t want to say too much. I loved the journey, I don’t want to give you a map. Just trust me, and take a walk into the woods if any of this piques your interest.

Ada Byrd is trying to reestablish herself after a scandal leaves her unemployed. She takes on a teaching job in Lowry Bridge, a small farm town where everyone knows everyone and a secret will not be kept. Things are going pretty well; she's made friends with a couple people in town and likes taking her students out into the woods to explore. She starts to feel as if Lowry Bridge could be her landing place.

Weird things start happening to Ada. She's attacked by a swarm of crickets, finds a fresh squirrel's tail in a bouquet of flowers, and hears voices in the woods. All of these things are only witnessed by her...no one else can see or hear them. She starts to believe that this is all the work of an old, unseen beast in the woods that she calls the Grey Dog. It's leaving offerings for her.

As she works to find the meaning behind it all, she starts to lose herself. Are these visions real? Is this paranormal or the work of traumatic memories coming back to haunt her? Who is more dangerous? The Grey Dog or Ada herself?

I loved this. I'm not usually a historical fiction fan, but when you throw horror into the mix I'm all in!

This was a slow-burn horror and it was all the sweeter for it. I found myself unable to stop reading because the eeriness of the book sucked me in. I had to know what was going on and who to blame. I wasn't expecting there to be as much gore in this book as there was, but it was so well done. It enhanced the story and made you feel like you were watching these events unfold right alongside Ada.

This book, to me, felt like the epitome of a "mad woman." As the journal entries progress, you really ask yourself is Ada being haunted by an entity or did her family and the town of past and present run her straight into the ground?

I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for a sapphic, historical work of horror that will leave you speechless.

I don't read horror, but all it takes is a cover to pull me in.

I could feel the anticipation building through the journalistic structure of this novel, and my lordy, the horror. Yes, it takes awhile to get into this novel, but in reflection you can see the importance of it. Gish has done well with the historical aspects of the plot, I definitely felt for the female protagonist during this era, and the struggles ultimately leading into its climax.

I’ve long been a fan of Gothic horror and historical horror novels, especially in the early days of The Horror Bookshelf. I was always aware of the classics and I’m almost certain that along with Goosebumps, checking those books out of my local library were my earliest brushes with the dark and macabre. However, it wasn’t until I started The Horror Bookshelf and started digging into the world of indie horror that I was exposed to modern horror authors writing in that style. I was immediately hooked. There was a stretch of time where I drifted away from it - mainly due to not knowing where to start - but there has been a bit of a resurgence in that style that has forced me to start paying closer attention. Books like T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, Catherine McCarthy’s Immortelle, and Caitlin Starling’s The Death of Jane Lawrence are just a few of these stellar novels that have made me fall in love with this sub-genre all over again. 

I love just about every style of horror from the blood-soaked styling of splatterpunk to psychological horror, but there’s something about the atmosphere of Gothic and historical horror fiction that sets an almost unmatched ambiance. I think it has a little bit to do with a sense of venturing into the past and imagining what living in a different time period must be like, but mainly I think it’s the isolation of those stories. Whether the horrors are supernatural or found in others, I think it’s that sense of not being able to easily flee or use modern technology that really draws me into those stories. So when I stumbled across Elliott Gish’s debut novel Grey Dog, I was immediately intrigued. 

Grey Dog is set in 1901 and follows schoolteacher and nature enthusiast Ada Byrd as she arrives in the small, isolated farming community of Lowry Bridge to take up the vacant teaching post. This new opportunity offers Ada a chance to start over, to build a new life in a community where nobody knows about her past or the secrets that she is trying to outrun. She escapes the influence of her domineering father and despite her reserved nature, she begins to build a flourishing life in Lowry Bridge. She’s helping her students improve in their studies and has struck up a blossoming friendship with the minister’s wife Agatha MacPherson as well as the town pariah, Norah Kinsley. It seems that she may have finally carved out a life for herself when she starts to experience cryptic dreams and witnesses bizarre phenomena including a swarm of dying crickets, a malformed faun and the sounds of something prowling outside the school. It seems that something old and powerful is reaching out to Ada with offerings from the one thing she loves most - nature. These experiences lead Ada to act erratically and as her confusion escalates, she must decide if she will embrace the grisly gifts of the Grey Dog or attempt to regain her old life.

The thing that immediately grabbed me when reading Grey Dog was the seemingly effortless way Gish captured the tone of vintage Gothic novels. There is a certain cadence to the structure and tone of those novels, and Gish is able to channel that into the narrative of Grey Dog in a way that makes the story feel like it was written in the early 20th century. That was an important element of the story for me because it allowed myself to really lose myself in Ada’s world. It also accentuates the way Gish not only explores the tropes of women’s historical fiction, but the way she is able to deconstruct them and rearrange them into something bold and new through the lens of the genre’s past. The narrative unfolds through a series of journal entries, which gives readers an intimate look into Ada’s life and personal thoughts and leads to rich characterization. Gish has created a memorable character in Ada Byrd and I’m fairly certain that anyone who picks up Grey Dog will be enamored with Ada and her journey. 

There were times where the pacing of Grey Dog didn’t quite work for me at first. I love a “slow-burn” as much as anyone, but there were a few moments where the momentum started to lag a bit. However, I think that had more to do with my preconceived notions on how the novel would unfold as I expected the horror aspect to feature much more heavily throughout the book. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely plenty of horror to be found in Grey Dog, it’s just that there is a bit of a journey until the tension starts to ratchet up. At first, I was worried that those moments would hinder my enjoyment of the novel, but Ada is such an engaging character, Gish was able to keep me invested in her journey. That’s one of the things that made Grey Dog such an intriguing read for me. My initial thoughts while reading were that the pacing was a little too slow and I wished that there were a bit more of the horror elements sprinkled throughout the early portions of the story. However, once I finished Grey Dog, I slowly started to change my mind. The way the story unfolded perfectly captures Ada’s transformation from the woman she was at the beginning of the novel to the woman she becomes.

Grey Dog can be a bit of a challenging read for reader’s not prepared for its more literary leanings early on, but it’s a rewarding journey that combines the traditions of Gothic horror with a dash of folk horror for a story that encourages you to think about it long after the final page. Gish is definitely a writer to watch and I look forward to reading more of her work in the future!

Well, this was a delightful read. Grey Dog follows Ada Byrd, a 30-year-old spinster, as she starts a new post as a school teacher in small town called Lowry Bridge in 1901. Early on, Ada alludes to trauma she's experienced relating to her father, her beloved deceased sister, and a "situation" that happened at her last teaching post. At first, Ada finds her place in town, makes friends, and makes progress teaching her students. But she starts to experience dreams and strange happenings that put a strain on her mental health and relationships.

The book is written as diary entries, which mostly works if you ignore the practical logistics of recalling exact events and conversations. But to have insight into Ada's slow-burning female rage is a delight. It almost gave me relief each time I would read a new entry, thinking that everything was more or less "okay" if she's able to write. I really liked reading how Ada's relationships to the female characters in the book (Mrs. Grier, Agatha, Norah, Muriel) evolved in different ways. I liked the eerie-ness of the setting, the inevitable slow burn that you can't look away from, the sapphic longing. I really liked the writing itself, not overly flowery but still insightful, reflective; old-timey without feeling burdensome.

This is a long slow-paced book, and while I never really felt a lull, it can be off-putting for those who need things to happen. It did make it difficult to pick up at times, and it was not a quick read, but I enjoyed the atmospheric writing. There were a lot of child characters, and though each was described at seemed to mostly have their own distinct personality, it was annoying to keep track of who's who. The ending was definitely wild and mostly gave closure, but due to the format of the book being journal entries, it just ends when Ada stops writing and you're sort of left wondering.

A well crafted small town slow burn horror story as one woman’s past forces her to take a teaching position a peculiar small town. As she makes acquaintances with her new community, taking a particular liking to the pastor’s lovely wife, Ada’s grief-ridden past starts to catch up to her. With odd encounters and whispers plaguing her, Ada’s determination to maintain a pristine reputation for both her (and her father’s watching eyes) starts to loosen. It’s an eerie, mounting kind of horror about grief and expectations and what it means, and what it takes, to be free as a woman in a society that doesn’t allow it.

This is a horror story of a spinster woman who takes a teaching job in a remote part of Canada after a troubled past and repressive father. The theme of the book is religious fundamentalism versus nature. The main character begins to hear noises and voices in the woods, and slowly learns there have been many victims of this malignant force that lives in the woods. I read this book in about two days because the story was so compelling.

Wild women don’t get the blues.

An eerie folk horror gothic and psychological slow-build of madness, in a closed-in, oppressive small-town historical setting, surrounded by woods in which something hungry calls. . .

Ada Byrd starts out as the anxious new teacher in the village whom everyone treats affectionately, only to slowly descend in status to a smelly forest witch they can’t stand to be around. Ada narrates this story through journal entries, so we only get her perception of events. This is a madwoman’s diary, and leaves a lot of questions unanswered and ambiguous, in true gothic horror style.

The horror here is mostly in the grotesque imagery and psychological intrigue, and the mysterious force courting the fiery yet meek young women of the village, enticing them to embrace their wildest desires. There’s also creepy children, a mysterious beautiful rich widow, and suspenseful environmental isolation.

This book engages topics such as religious trauma, sexism, and manifestations of master-slave relationship dynamics various kinds of women may have experienced back in the early 1900s when this is set. The pain and horror of childbearing and childbirth is another hot subject recurring in the story. Many females in the village area (and not just the human ones) miscarry, but it’s not always a bad thing for them.

Finally, while this was certainly a slow build of a story, it passed rather quickly due to the easy lengths of the journal entries, and didn’t feel like 400 pages at all. Like the grey dog of the title, it is seductive and dream-like.

In the novel, we follow Ada, an unmarried teacher, through her diary entries as she starts her new position at a school in a tight-knit rural community at the beginning of the 20th Century. Even though Ada‘s reeling from a recent loss and constantly struggling with her sexual identity, she’s so used to meet all the expectations her father, her students‘ parents and the villagers hold towards her, that the only whim she permits herself is to educate her students in natural history and the wonders the forest holds. But no matter how hard she tries, people will never be satisfied with her, and the more desperate she becomes, the more strange things happen, and the louder the forest calls for her…

This was a powerful read about the way women’s lives were and still are controlled by the men around them and what it means to break free from societal pressure and one’s own misguided expectations. It shows how women are not only victims, but also become their oppressors’ accessories in subjecting their peers to unrealistic standards - and are the first to scoff if they catch someone struggling. Ada‘s path is a hard one, and the reader can’t help but suffer with her. The use of horror elements in the tale is sparse, but effectively intensifies the slowly rising feelings of paranoia and isolation the protagonist has to deal with.

As Ada’s story is revealed piece by piece and nature uncovers more of its secrets, the narrative develops a pull you can no longer escape - and as the ending unfolds, the question lingers: What does it actually mean to be free? And is it really worth paying the price?

I’m still thinking about this and am still at a loss for answers - definitely a mark of quality for good literature.

The story unfolds slowly and there are several mysteries you can sense as the story progresses, not just Ada’s character but of those around her that come in the form of nature and residents.

For the most part it feels as though not much is happening but pieces of Ada’s past life which are a cause of her grief and despair are teased. There’s this sense of something supernatural that is causing Ada to have the luck she has so far.

The imagery during those moments of delusions she experiences are quit vivid. The writer makes these parts feel quite visceral in how they suggest Ada’s state of mind.

This was an exciting slow burn horror that will appeal to fans of historical fiction.

Ada is an inconvenience to her father: a spinster (unlike her more conventional sister), who finds more pleasure exploring nature than she does in the spiritual and corporeal. After being dismissed from a teaching position due to unseemly behavior, he shuttles her off to Lowry Bridge to distance himself from any further embarrassment. Along with a diary given to her by her sister, Ada brings her pent up anger, grief, and loneliness to her new home and teaching position.

Through time used to explore the woods, and spending time with the local “witch”, she begins to express herself and allow the words and feelings she has pent up to come out (behaviors not becoming of a woman). Slowly, she strips herself of conventional expectations, and gains a certain clarity. However, her new behaviors evoke fear and loathing by her students and fellow villagers.

So, what is happening to Ada? Has she finally snapped under the presures of her father and society? Or is her father right; is there something that has always been wrong about her? Can there be something in the woods that she frequently explores? Is it the “witch”?

This is a very satisfying Gothic tale set in the Edwardian time period. Told through diary entries, we experience her physical, emotional, and mental disintegration.
Themes of expectations and needs of women are explored; there are no happy and satisfied women here. At times, the story seems to stall. However, about 3/4 into the book, the pace and horror gains traction.

I would like to thank NetGalley and ECW Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Chilling slow burn! Enjoyed this book thoroughly from the get go! This book really opened my eyes to a new genre I hadn't tried too much before!

3.5/5 Stars

TL;DR - An unsettling tale of grief, longing, and small-town Puritanical politics. Less a horror story and more a “Local Woman Goes Feral” novel with brief moments of the supernatural, this book excels in atmosphere but falls short on the promised spookiness.

Big thanks to ECW Press and NetGalley for providing the ARC for this book in exchange for an honest review!

***Trigger Warnings for: mentioned death of a sibling, mentions of child abuse and on-page child abuse, mentions of domestic violence, mentions of death during childbirth and the death of an infant, Christian rhetoric and intolerance, unwanted sexual advances, dubious consent, mentions of suicidal ideation, sexism, miscarriage, mentioned death of a child, gore, minor self-harm, blood, murder, and mild cannibalism.***

“There are two Gods. […] There is the God of inside, the God of churches and prayer meetings and all that — and then there is the God of outside, the God that lives in the trees and in the dirt.”

‘Grey Dog’ by Elliott Gish is a historical literary horror novel that follows Ada Byrd, a spinster and schoolteacher who is assigned to the remote town of Lowry Bridge at the beginning of the 20th century. Fleeing her past, she hopes to start fresh in this new place, but she is still haunted by things she cannot forget. Worse still, something is watching her from the woods, following her, and then it begins to call her by name…

I have mixed feelings about this book. Overall, I did enjoy it, but I’m still left a little disappointed after finishing it.

First, the prose is pretty good. It’s simple but evocative, and I think the turn-of-the-century language is spot-on and lends itself well to the immersion of the novel. The author does a very good job of transporting you to a backwoods village in rural Canada in 1901. I highlighted a number of passages, though more often than not, it’s for what’s being said than how it’s written. Still, more highlights than a lot of things I’ve read recently. And I did really enjoy that the story is recounted to us in journal entries written by Ada herself - a really interesting literary device that was fun to read.

Second, this book is feminist AF and seething with feminine rage. It really highlights the bullshit Puritanical nonsense women have endured for centuries, at the hands of men and those of other women, which adds to the suffocating atmosphere of the novel. There are a lot of passages that hit hard in regards to this, for example:

“One might say “a good man” and mean anything — there are as many ways of being a good man, it seems, as there are of being a man at all. But there is only one way to be a good woman. It is such a narrow, stunted, blighted way to be that I wonder any woman throughout history has been up to the task. Perhaps none of us ever have.”

Chef’s kiss.

There’s sapphic rep, which I loved! On that note, I really love that the author describes things a sapphic character is doing with other women as “queer” or “gay”, as in the literal turn-of-the-century meanings (strange and joyful, respectively), but also, like, in the super gay way. I feel like it’s a little inside joke and I love it.

All those praises aired, I have two main complaints that are interconnected.

Those being, this book is very slow, and it’s barely paranormal. The first spooky-ish thing doesn’t happen until 30% in, and then there’s only sparing horror moments throughout the rest of the book. We don’t really even get to see the titular “Grey Dog”, not really, just have a few brief instances where we know it’s there. The scene in the schoolhouse is the most we get, and while I did enjoy that scene, I really wish more of the book had been that creepy and intense. I also wish there was a better explanation of the Grey Dog and it’s nature/origins, but we don’t really get much. I think if you go into this like I did, expecting a freaky, Gothic horror a la “there’s something in the woods”, you’re going to be disappointed. If you go into this treating it like a historical literary book with a slight peppering of the paranormal, I think you’ll really enjoy it. Because honestly, the real horror element of this book is the patriarchy and small-town politics.

That said, I did read this at night and very much regret it. The supernatural elements are there, but unfortunately not to the degree I look for in books billed as horror.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, I did enjoy this, but it just didn’t have enough of what I wanted to warrant me purchasing a physical copy.

I genuinely feel so bad that I didn’t enjoy this more, especially because everyone else seems to be liking it. But I fear I made a grave error requesting this in not reading the description more carefully. I am not a historical fiction person but I am a feral woman horror book and I think I just wanted more from the horror. I think this would be great for fans of Mexican Gothic or The Hacienda. It’s very atmospheric and pretty slow which I felt the same about the former two comparisons.

5 stars.

I’m obsessed. I could tell almost immediately that this was going to work for me, and it worked more and more the deeper I got into it!

A slow-burn literary horror set in a small town with themes of loss, longing, rage, nature, & womanhood. This is a crazy impressive first novel. While it is a slow burn, I was eager to keep the pages turning, wanting to devour this book. There are so many poignant quotes about what it means and how it feels to be a woman.

It was atmospheric and moody, written in a journal point of view that worked perfectly for the story. I look forward to reading more from Gish in the future.

Thanks Netgalley for this ARC <3

This was a slow burn of a book, in a good way. The entire story is told from the POV of Ada in her diary. It’s 1901 and Ada, an almost 30 year old spinster school teacher, is sent to a small town for a teaching position after a scandal at her last post. Ada is glad to get away from her overbearing father and a tragedy at home. The small town, time period, the forest and the townspeople make for an atmospheric setting. The tension builds slow and it took me by surprise when Ada’s writing starts to sound like she is becoming unhinged. Unreliable narrator, woman going mad or supernatural mystery or all of the above?

An excellent horror debut: eerie, slow-burn and thoroughly invested in its characters and its world building. The themes of queer identity and sexuality and the role of the patriarchy in a historical setting are considered and thoughtful, without ever feeling as though they dominate the narrative progression. It's brilliant to see stories like this being publishing in 2024, and I'll eagerly keep an eye out for what Gish does next

The story begins with Ada in dire need of a new beginning to escape from her past, so when a job opportunity arises, she accepts it graciously. Only for this new beginning to bring up her past and force Ada to confront it while constantly provoking more questions. This novel is wonderfully ominous and impossible to put down. The author's vivid descriptions and captivating storytelling bring Ada's journey to life.

Grey Dog drew me in at first. It is written in an attractive voice, very turn of the century, diary entries. The story is also interesting enough: A not so young (almost 30!) teacher takes a job in a small community. She lives with a childless couple and teaches her motley group of pupils. But something is wrong: Not only are there secrets in her own past, but bad things seem to be happening, and she feels watched...

But after a strong start, the book began to annoy me. For one thing, it is far too long for the narrative voice. It is always remembering, always telling, and always artificial - because I have written a diary before, and no, one does not normally write long exchanges of direct speech down or recounts everything in order. It just doesn't work to tell this story that way, and it gets boring just to follow the flow.

The second problem is the pacing. Some strange things happen, but then... nothing. The terrible secrets are revealed - but very slowly. I simply lost the will to read and had to force myself to continue. To be honest, the book is just not interesting enough for the time I had to spend with it. I started to speed read at the half way point, and did not really feel that I missed that much. If you are reading for the atmosphere, this might work better for you.

There are a lot of good ideas and I really wanted to love it. But if I had not received an ARC from netgalley, I would not have finished it. I do think it is a good first book, and I will pick up the author again, even if this was not quite my cup of tea.