Look no further if you want a creepy, atmospheric read that gives you the chills!! I was utterly engrossed in this from start to finish - and to think this is the authors' debut novel!! Fabulous stuff!!

Ellen is sent to ghost write the memoir of an elderly woman, living alone in a secluded house off the beaten track up north. It's quite a journey to get there, and the reaction of the locals when she tells them is rather guarded to say the least!

And then we are introduced to Miss Carey, whose home she will be staying in and writing down her story. Except that Miss Carey has memory issues, meaning a lot of free time for Ellen to explore the local area and to see some rather strange things that make her think she might be losing her mind! There is a real sense of WTF is going on, not only for Ellen but you as a reader as the creepy vibes continue and you start to learn more about the stories and legends relating to the house, the area and the past and I really loved the whole setting and atmosphere that the characters and location really set.

As Miss Carey shares her memories with Ellen, we get a real sense of the painful past that she endured, and Ellen really starts to feel for this woman and it plays on her mind too when the job is finished and she returns back to her normal life to complete the assignment. A really absorbing read and I can't wait to read more from this author in the future!!

I wouldn't necessarily call this a horror or thriller, but it is a deeply moving ghost story in a spooky old house. I really loved the striking imagery of eels throughout and the metaphor of their life cycle. The author does a great job exploring different kinds of "ghosts" and hauntings - ghosts of a previous life, of a lost friendship. As someone who is childfree, the grief of losing friends to different life stages hit hard. The incorporation of modern elements like cell phones and email surprised me, but felt fresh in a gothic novel and was very well-done. Definitely recommend if you love ghost stories and gothic fiction.

Thanks to the Salt Publishing and Netgalley for the eARC!

This is another gothic, and though I wouldn’t categorize it as horror Apostolides writes such delicate, suspenseful tension that it makes me nauseous waiting to see what happens, even if the stakes are low.

I love the interwoven stories balancing between Ellen’s work and her personal life. The primary narrative stands on its own, but I really enjoyed the contrast between different versions of womanhood, and the solidarity between them.

I love the interwoven stories balancing between Ellen’s work and her personal life. The primary narrative stands on its own, but I really enjoyed the contrast between different versions of womanhood, and the solidarity between them.

loved the idea behind this book, which is what drew me in. We have a ghost writer staying at and interviewing a lady in a haunted mansion called Elver House in the English countryside. As I've been a ghost writer, love books about old houses, and have a fascination for elvers (baby eels), this seemed like it was written just for me.

t's a fast, enjoyable read as we try to determine why the lady who lives at Elver House wants Ellen to write her autobiography. The problem is that the lady is losing her memory and has lived a very isolated life, so it takes Ellen days to draw the story out from her. Still, it seems like something is missing. This is one of those books that doesn't reveal its secrets until the end and has a sense of place comes alive in your mind.

This book was slow-paced which is exactly what I want in gothic fiction to build atmosphere and mystery. The ending was obvious but again, I just don't think big shocking reveals work with gothic novels so I wasn't mad about it.

I wasn't that bothered about the subplot with Ellen and her friend but the book would have been even shorter without it so I get why it was there. Apostolides descriptions of Elver House and Ellen's time in London were really vivid and engaging. Great debut!

An atmospheric and haunting gothic mystery that also manages to weave in a look at the expectations placed on women in domestic spaces, The Homecoming isn’t exactly surprising in its twist, but is very enjoyable nonetheless.

I'd call this a Gothic mystery, as it has almost all the tropes: run-down secluded manor house, woman main character, creepy but not horrific scenes, and a social critique. All the best Gothic stories have some grander theme woven in, though this one addresses it head-on rather than through allegory or more subtle means.

I really enjoyed this book. I can't say I love it, but that's only because the twist was super obvious to me, to the effect that the reveal felt too drawn out. I guessed it around 30 percent and knew at 45, though a tagline on the blurb that I didn’t read kind of spoils it. If we're supposed to know the twist early on, the fact that Ellen does not is a choice I’m not sure works.

Yet, that's not to say the book isn't enjoyable even knowing the twist. It's immensely interesting because the main character is likable, Ms. Carey's memories give it a historical fiction feel at times, and the house is so atmospheric. It does move at a rather slow pace, and I could have used a few more flashbacks from Ms. Carey to really cement the central theme of the book, but I found myself unable to put it down. It takes on the feel of a classic Gothic story at times due to its languid pace. It’s more The Woman in White vs Starling House.

The house, as I said, is great - it’s grand yet falling down, with interesting grounds. The elvers were cool - I didn’t really know what those were, and the idea of their migration as a sort of homecoming fit well with the overall theme. The initial scenes of the novel are downright scary and really drew me into the story. If the author wanted to try a full-on horror novel, I’m sure she’d write a great one.

The writing, for being first person (which I’m very picky about), was well done. The book has a few interesting second-person lines, which tie into the theme and make the novel feel like a long letter at times. This was fun.

The main theme of the book is motherhood, specifically the role of women if/once they become mothers, which is an important topic. Unfortunately, I found the approached was a bit too heavy-handed. Despite the second-person lines here and there, there isn’t enough about it until the end, it sort of falls flat/feels unfinished, and we could have gotten more with Ms. Carey's life to broaden this topic/make comparisons.

Still, a solid 4-star read and impressive for a debut.

The Homecoming had such a good start! An interesting plot that reminded me of Evelyn Hugo mixed with the gothic vibes of a old mansion & a mysterious old lady. The eel symbolism added an interesting twist, but I feel like it didn't serve as much of a purpose as it could've. The story has great potential and as a debut novel, it's wonderful! My only grievance with the book was that there was so much build up for it to just fall flat and left me hoping for something more!

The Homecoming was beautifully written and the pacing was perfect. There were also a lot of fun facts sprinkled in that made it interesting. The vibes were a mix between The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and the movie A Cure for Wellness,

While I enjoyed the story, I was disappointed because it was not something I would call horror and the ending wasn’t very surprising. I think there were a ton of missed opportunities here that would have made this a 5-star read.

I really enjoyed this. It wasn't quite what I expected, but enjoyable regardless. I found this to be a nice gothic story about grief in various forms, relationships and societal expectations. The two stories running side by side, Ellen's relationship with the character only named as "you" and the history of Catherine Carey of Elver House. There was a reveal near the end that was kind of easily predicted by the way the story was going but I don't think that really changed much about how I felt about it. It was a compelling and easily consumable read and I will be looking forward to more from the author.

Wow what a great book!

The writing really was fantastic, so atmospheric, usually I don’t like a slow burn but the pacing worked really well for me. The build up of quiet dread and tension throughout the time in the house was really well done. I was able to guess where the story was going, but this didn’t spoil my experience.

Thank you NetGalley and Salt Publishing for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Love to be able to start describing something by saying, “this is a ghost story, this is a love story,” and this book does it differently than any other story I’ve described that way.

Ellen is a ghost writer. Her current assignment is to write the memoirs of Miss Catherine Carey. Given Catherine’s advanced age, Ellen must interview her in person at the Carey family estate, Elver House. Superstitious villagers, a disordered house, and an expired pantry all set Ellen on edge, as does Catherine’s seemingly declining mental state. What this horror story doesn’t provide in jumpscares it makes up for in the slow tightening of tension with each shuffling step and shadowy figure in a corner.

In the future, I think readers will return to The Homecoming the same way that they return to Jekyll & Hyde: we know exactly how it’s going to end, we know what the reveal is, but we still want to see how our protagonist gets to that point. About halfway through, it’s pretty clear where this story is going, but I still enjoyed the clues that led us (and Ellen) there drip by drip. Of course, we all know how Jekyll & Hyde ends because it’s been part of cultural knowledge for so long; The Homecoming is brand new, yet still that predictable.

The narrative tested my suspension of disbelief at times. Obviously, Ellen doesn’t know that she’s in a horror novel, so I can’t try to apply logic to all her actions. But even so, there were several moments where I wondered why she didn’t just leave Elver House. Her loyalty to Catherine doesn’t seem to derive from anything specific, so we get rapidly shifting impulses to flee the house and then to stay by Catherine’s side to protect her and see the assignment through to the end. There’s nothing that prevents Ellen from leaving, no trope-y dead phone or dead car battery, and her reasons for staying feel vague for someone who likes her job but not that much.

What saves this story for me and makes it something I’ll keep thinking about is the B-plot. Ellen narrates this story from well after the fact (another complimentary parallel to other gothic literature), relating it to her unnamed best friend. Their relationship is my favorite part. It’s a love that’s reminiscent of Jo and Meg March: Ellen wanted to be able to live with her best friend forever, but when the friend had a daughter their relationship grew distant. They’re now both grappling with a loneliness they think they shouldn’t be feeling since they have so many other wonderful people and things in their lives, but they don’t have each other. Ellen constantly thinks about memories with her friend because that’s all she has left of the two of them; “I didn’t miss that time, but I missed you” (176) hits hard for anyone who misses their college best friends but never wants to be 19 again.

This is a story about yearning for the past, not because you love the past but because you aren’t satisfied with the present, because you think your strongest relationships are the ones you made in childhood. It’s a story about loneliness that we have to work really really hard to overcome, but we can overcome it. I’m gonna call my best friend and rewatch Frances Ha now.

Wowwww I loved this book! The setting was so lush and it was just a really solid, classic ghost story set in a creepy house. Enjoyed it immensely.

Thank you so much to Salt Publishing for providing me with an E-ARC!


3.25 stars!!

I loved how the atmosphere was written!!!! I needed to get that off my chest. Gothic, unsettling, really painted a picture to imagine and the whole vibe it gave off.

The way the atmosphere was done and the setting was perfect and really held my attention and interest to what the heck was going on and was going to happen. Sadly towards the midpoint it felt like it was dragging a little, maybe because I was really hoping the horror aspect would kick in, but I sort of worked out how things were going to go but overall I really just enjoyed the writing style. So happy to have had a chance reading The Homecoming as I'll definitely make sure to keep an eye out for future work by Zoë Apostolides.

Solid debut! This book has all the classic gothic elements we know and love. A stranger coming to stay in a crumbling, ancient mansion out in the middle-of-nowhere England. Elver House is a beautiful place that has seen its share of death throughout its time. At one point the home was used as a hospital for soldiers during the war. Ellen has come to visit after her employer was contacted to help write a memoir for the guardian of the home, Catherine Carey. After Ellen arrives she quickly find that the reigning matriarch has some incredibly strange habits.

I feel like this may have been more suited as a short story or novella. I enjoyed the base story but much of the book is monotonous daily behavior. I kind of expected things to intertwine a bit more but they never really did. I LOVE detailed books with extensive world building but hoped for more connected bits.

Elver House is well done and imagining the Conger Brook was *wild.* Ellen and Catherine are well dimensioned but I was expecting more from Catherine’s recollections. I appreciated the commentary on women within society and the distinctions awarded to mothers and fathers, but overall this book never crescendoed quite the way I’d anticipated it would. It’s an atmospheric, slower book that I wouldn’t really chuck into the horror section. There is a supernatural element but it’s minimal and I expected some of the other components (ie the overflowing with eels brook) to factor in more than they did. I will say I initially read “eel babbing” as “eel bobbing” and was really impressed that kids across the pond stick their mouths into water to grab eels as opposed to the apples we use here in the States. A nice read but not quite what I had prognosticated. I will definitely look for more of Apostolides’ work in the future if she continues to try her hand at horror.

Thank you Netgalley & Salt Publishing for an eARC ♥️

Zoë Apostolides crafts a debut that lingers like the last exhale of a candle flame—slow, deliberate, and haunting. *The Homecoming* is less read than *experienced*, a novel where the air itself feels thick with unsaid things.
Ellen, a ghostwriter by trade, arrives at Elver House to excavate Miss Carey’s past, only to find herself the one being unraveled. The estate breathes around her—a crumbling, sentient thing with creaks that sound like whispers and shadows that move when unobserved. Apostolides doesn’t describe setting; she conjures it, turning the wilds of Northumberland into a character as alive and inscrutable as the women at the story’s core.
The bond between Ellen and Miss Carey is the novel’s dark heart: a push-pull of vulnerability and control, intimacy and evasion. Their dynamic defies simple labels, slipping between confessor and confessional, hunter and prey. The prose mirrors this dance—lyrical but precise, beautiful without ever softening the underlying unease.
By the end, the line between memory and invention blurs beyond recognition. Apostolides leaves no tidy resolutions, only the certainty that some doors, once opened, cannot be closed. *The Homecoming* doesn’t just haunt—it colonises,settling into the reader’s mind like a ghost in a borrowed house.

I really enjoyed The Homecoming by Zoë Apostolides; a slow-burn, atmospheric blend of horror and mystery.

The setting and characters were well written and believable, creating a sense of unease that built gradually throughout the book.

One of the standout aspects for me was the social commentary, particularly around the role of women in society and the pressure to become mothers. The interview format, featuring conversations between a woman in her 30s and another approaching 90, was especially effective. It highlighted how, despite generational differences, many societal expectations remain unchanged.

The final quarter of the book was a real highlight — full of twists and turns that kept me absolutely hooked until the last page.

Look forward to reading more by this author in the future!

The Homecoming is a dark gothic tale that slowly lures you into its dark claws and hooks you when you least expect it. Thrilling! 💫💫💫💫💫

It is a very simple job. Ellen needs to visit Miss Carey at her home, Elver House, and take notes for her memoir. Ellen finds herself having to cross through a forest to get to the home because the taxi can go through. She doesn't find Miss Carey, and it is pouring rain. She stays indoors, and per her boss, she just waits for her to arrive or leave the next day. When Miss Carey finally decides to appear, she is very ellusive, hard to pin down, and overall not what Ellen is used to. The manor is falling apart, there is a creepy eerie vibe, and Ellen can't seem to pinpoint where all this is coming from.

Thank you, Netgalley and Salt Publishing, for this ARC. All opinions are entirely my own.

The return of folk horror to the British cultural imagination is not an unacknowledged phenomenon. Not only have the last few years seen an increase in the the genre itself (Enys Men, Lucy Rose’s The Lamb, Andrew Michael Hurley’s Barrowbeck) but also a renewed study of Folk Horror as cultural concept (I’m thinking of Kier-La Janisse’s wonderful Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, William Burns’ Ghost of an Idea and a whole myriad of articles and discussions from writers like Jude Rogers, John Doran, and many more). Folk horror is back baby, and it is being analysed to death, or at the very least into a comatose state.

However, incredibly, two releases this year offer a fresh take on folk horror, positing the stories of ghosts, grief, and social upheaval as a particularly feminine story, folk horror as a battle against the domestic drudgery of the woman in the home. Fréwaka available on Shudder from Aislinn Clarke, and The Homecoming, Zoë Apostolides's debut novel from SALT publishing, are remarkably similar in both narrative set-up and thematic hang-ups. Fréwaka follows a young carer sent to the home of a damaged Irisih pensioner with a possible mental disorder for a few weeks of care and support whilst Apostolide’s Homecoming sees her young protagonist sent to the home of a possibly unwell woman who has hired a ghost writer to pen her memoirs. Both women are set to find that the unsettling and the uncanny are of far more importance to their work than the personal care they provide.

Fréwaka itself is a fantastic film with an unsettling atmosphere built by Clarke’s lingering on empty still frames that are somehow both deeply empty and visually dynamic. Along with an incredible set of performances, a genuinely chilling score, and some overarching melancholy, the director offers some legitimate scares where lesser films would only allude. This work fits into a new avant-folk horror movement pioneered by works like Kill List, that are dealing with a vision of historical oppression rising from a both literal and metaphorical ‘beneath’.

The Homecoming is a story that is gentle and kind, if not altogether scary. It is clear that Apostolides as a writer came into this story not from a place of late night chills but rather from the feeling of being tormented by the ghost of lives lived and relationships lost. The ghosts, as they often are, are secondary to the story. This isn’t to say the novel avoids horror, quite the opposite, Apostolides seems to revel in the ghosts and spooks of Elver House, the titular home offering them a legitimacy and genuine fear often avoided in literary horror altogether. However, they are bleak rather than horrific.

Where both texts excel is in pushing past the pitfalls of ‘elevated horror’ as 21st Century subgenre. Whereas most works that fit into this category are happy for their ‘monster’ (I’m using this word as a placeholder for whatever the object of fear may be) to be a vague metaphor for a feeling or societal idea it is impossible to pin down, a la grief or prejudice, these two works get to the heart of something more specific. The hauntings of these stories are feminine ones, they are the haunting of women pushed to the edge by lives of domestic servitude. The Homecoming especially homes in on this idea with the novel’s central narrative interrupted by references to a friend of the narrator, a first time mother who is seeing the world through the eyes of a mother. This unnamed character is coming to terms with the misogyny of raising a baby, the critiques, the judgement, and with a husband who is more interested in getting away than getting stuck in. A common tale.

Compare this with Fréwaka in which women are the custodians of emotional extremes, from grief to jubilation, love to hate, and an interesting narrative begins to emerge. It is one in which folk horror is not about the ‘other’ stuck firmly in the past but the self as a figure trapped in gendered relations. It is the oppression of the woman that creates the monster, a monster that haunts, lingers, and walks with our protagonists. There is no escape from the patriarchy.

Folk horror is slowly becoming a buzzword, but that doesn’t mean we should write it off. In both Fréwaka and The Homecoming, folk horror is back as actual horror. These texts are visions with genuine scares, and have smuggled in these stories a criticism of the patriarchy which flies past the surface and delves deep into the trappings of gender.

Fréwaka is currently available via Shudder while The Homecoming is out from Salt Books on the 7th of July. Check both out.

I've made no secret that I love a gothic novel. The Homecoming is a modern gothic tale, complete with a haunted house and a plucky young woman. As with other gothic novels, the underlying themes touch on grief, loneliness, greed and societal obligations.

Split in two distinct area, modern London and a rural, secluded home, the story weaves the two places into and within each other. Ellen is doing her best, and the opportunity to write Miss Carey's memoir, What she finds at the manor is nothing I can describe without spoiling the 'twist', but suffice it to say that Zoe Apostolides does an outstanding job at intersecting the two women.

Books like this are rare. It truly takes the right person to capture both a modern timeline and a gothic tone. Apostolides does this swimmingly. ;)

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A modern gothic tale about the choices women make, the choices which are available to them, and the ways in which obligation and social expectation bind them.

The Homecoming follows Ellen, an independent woman working as a ghost-writer in London, as she embarks on her latest assignment to Elver House, in the rainy hills of Northumberland. There, she has been tasked with interviewing the elderly Catherine Carey in preparation for writing her memoirs.

Ellen arrives for her week-long assignment on a dark and rainy evening to find that the remote Elver House is in fact an eerie dilapidated manor, and Miss Carey, its sole occupant, is unexpectedly elusive, enigmatic, and strangely reticent to be interviewed. As Ellen spends more time in the house and with Miss Carey, she finds herself caught between a growing feeling of unease and an emerging sense of kinship and responsibility towards the older woman.

This story really plays with the idea of haunting - haunting as an action, a loss, a recursion, and as a homecoming – in a way that is extremely layered. Ellen’s career as a ghost-writer feels like clever allusion to this theme as a form of writing where the author’s voice metaphorically ‘haunts’ the finished work; forever drifting at the fringes of the text, sublimated, unacknowledged, and perhaps someday forgotten (and you thought I was going to say it was because it has the word ‘ghost’ in the title – ha!).

Metamorphosis is a similarly recurrent theme, embodied physically by the young eels (the elvers of Elver House) swimming within the brook which flows through the grounds of the manor. This theme knits together the narrative threads of the history of Elver House, with its many eras and transformations, and the complicating changes in Ellen’s own life and relationships. Motherhood, too, is here explored as a form of metamorphosis; an irreversible change in a woman’s life which ripples outwards to impact everyone close to her.

The horror here is very light-on, as the narrative is more of a tip of the hat to the gothic genre, rather than a true ‘horror’ in its own right. Readers expecting outright scares may come away disappointed, but enjoyers of eerie slow-burn mysteries may find themselves right at home, and I personally found myself breaking out in goosebumps several times from the unsettling atmosphere. Those who enjoyed Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions will find similar themes, explored in a modern context, here.

While I was able to predict the ending very early on (as I suspect most readers of gothic fiction will), this did not at all diminish my enjoyment of the story. Ellen’s interviews with Miss Carey were absolute highlights and, if anything, I would have liked to have heard more about her life and experiences as caretaker of the house.

Structurally, the timeline of Ellen’s stay at Elver House is occasionally confusing, arising from some slightly clumsy handling of the framing narrative. However, this does not detract from the well-handled execution of the themes and characters. At approximately 250 pages, the narrative moves along at a satisfying pace and never outstays its welcome, and Apostolides’ atmospheric descriptions of the house and surrounding countryside were an absolutely delight.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable read, if not a particularly scary one, and I look forward to reading more from Zoë Apostolides in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and Salt Publishing for providing a digital reviewer copy, in exchange for my honest opinion.