The characters and atmosphere are compelling, but I wanted more development of the side characters. The writing quality is outstanding. I can’t believe this is a debut. I didn’t know that Apostolides had ghostwritten several memoirs, but that explains why Ellen’s character felt so authentic. The plot has some pacing issues in the middle, but overall, the pages were turning because I just had to know what was going on. I felt frustrated with the plot holes/tropes, such as withholding information for plot convenience and miscommunication. Overall, The Homecoming is a mysterious and well-written debut, and I look forward to seeing what Apostolides writes next.

APPEAL FACTORS
Storyline: character-driven, unconventional
Pace: slow
Tone: angsty, moody, suspenseful, dark, mysterious, creepy, haunting
Writing Style: conversational, compelling
Character: authentic, complex, snarky, strong female

Read Alikes:
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
The Blue Maiden by Anna Noyes

The Homecoming is a mysterious, emotional, and thought-provoking debut about feminism, motherhood, and loneliness. This slow-paced, character-driven story gave me goosebumps multiple times. Although this is marketed as a horror, I recommend this novel to fans of Gothic mysteries.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Dripping in atmosphere, thick with unease, damp with secrets, The Homecoming is a deeply immersive and unsettling tale. Elver House is the perfect gothic stage: crumbling, remote and haunted by things left unsaid. Apostolides taps into the classic gothic canon of motherhood, isolation and the relentless weight of society's expectations of women filtered through a sharp, modern lens showing how these burdens transcend generations.

The interplay between Ellen’s observations and Miss Carey’s recollections creates a slow, creeping sense of dread that’s at its best when anchored in the strange rhythms of the house and the surrounding landscape. The eels, the uncanny presences, the lingering tension and mystery -they’re evocative but feel too faint, more suggestion than substance. I wanted them to bite deeper.

The novel’s atmosphere is rich but the structure sometimes works against it. Ellen’s internal monologue and fragmented memories, while thematically resonant, drag the pace past slow burn into somewhat lethargic. I found myself consistently more engaged by Miss Carey's story and Elver House than any of Ellen's thoughts or memories. The haunting of the house itself, both in Ellen’s present and through Miss Carey’s stories, could have been pushed further, darker, stranger.

And I'll be honest - I wanted more eels. I mean look at that stunning cover!

Still this is a compelling and evocative gothic debut, full of shadowed corners and the quiet, creeping horror of lives constrained by expectation. I'd read more by Zoë Apostolides just for the atmosphere alone.

3.25 stars

This was an atmospheric tale of a woman tasked with obtaining an elderly woman’s life story so as to ghost write her memoir. The first third was my favorite part of the book - very gothic, creepy, and mysterious. The premise is great and had a good setup. Unfortunately the longer the book went on the less interested I was. The final twist was easy to see coming. I also found the writing to be a bit choppy and not as lyrical as I would have liked.

Thank you to NetGalley and Salt Publishing for access to this arc. All opinions are my own.

I would have to say this is a rather slow read. Patience is very much needed for this book. If you have that skill then this book is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for a horror novel. The ghost story aspect is very much there but the layered emotional history is a much stronger aspect. Or maybe I’m just too much of an empath?! Either way i enjoyed it and the writing style was smooth and relatable for many.

A nice slowburn with a few errors that is a bit annoying. I loved the setting. It's creepy, airy and gothic!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a chance to read this eARC in exchange for my honest opinions.

I wanted to love this, I really did. The premise was great, the writing was suitably gothic and the first quarter had me more than intrigued. But it just didn't click.

Also, there were some details that bugged me that I felt shouldn't have made it to the finished story. Namely, Ellen arrives at the house on a Friday and comments that the clocks went back an hour that night. That doesn't happen on a Friday. She then speaks to her boss on the next day, the Saturday, only for her boss to have to ring off because she has a work meeting and has to do the school run...on a Saturday. Later, we hear about the house being opened to the public in the 80s and get reference to a photo with a teenager wearing a Nirvana shirt...Nirvana only released their debut album in '89, so this didn't sit right with me. We also learned that the house eventually stopped opening to the public when Lady Diana died, and they took their website down and stopped taking bookings. Diana died in 97...I really can't imagine many private homes had their own online ticket booking website in 1997...I remember the internet from then and it wasn't much!

A shame, because there were lots of passages I liked here, but most of them followed the path of the whole book - they just led to something unsatisfying. The eels, for instance...loads of creepy potential there...but massively underused. Or all the pieces with Ellen talking about her friend, about how their lives have changed and how they've grown apart - they were brilliantly written, some of my favourite parts in fact, but didn't really lead anywhere.

Then the overall ending itself, which was also a disappointment. It felt rushed, it felt like it ran out of steam, and was overwhelmingly underwhelming.

A shame!

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the review copy

This is a well-written novel that I'd describe as 'hybrid'. Part-gothic, part-horror, part-ghost story. I love that, because it's a novel that relieves the reader of solid expectations. You think you're reading a 'standard' gothic novel, what with the old creaky house and the mysterious character, Catherine, and then it swerves into the expectations of a slightly different genre. Layered underneath is another kind of ghostly second person address to the reader, and that adds a further sense of the sinister or unsettling. I enjoyed it. Grateful thanks to NetGalley and to Salt Publishing for the ARC.

The protagonist of Zoë Apostolides’s debut novel, The Homecoming, is Ellen, a young ghostwriter sent from London to a remote village in Northumberland to interview Catherine Carey, the elderly owner of the dilapidated Elver House. Although Ellen was raised in the Cumbrian countryside, even that doesn’t prepare her for the wild setting of this stately home—named after the young eels that populate the local river. She arrives at the ruinous house on a dark night and is shocked to find no one at home. However, Miss Carey appears the following morning, and over the next week or so, Ellen attempts—though not without difficulty—to extract memories of Catherine’s upbringing, her father’s tragic death, and a lifetime spent in the dark shadow of the house, which is haunted by its own past and that of its inhabitants.

Zoë Apostolides’s debut is a highly atmospheric tale steeped in Gothic and horror tropes. There are clear echoes of the “haunted house” genre in the suspenseful descriptions of Miss Carey’s mansion and the elderly woman’s tales of the spirits that roam its rooms. The sense of an “outsider” among villagers who know more than they let on evokes strong folk horror vibes. I particularly liked the image of the “elvers”—the eels whose eerie presence brings a sense of dread, while also serving as a metaphor for the voyages of life. Apostolides brings a contemporary feel to a well-established genre by skilfully combining these elements with a portrayal of the predicaments faced by a young woman in today’s world. Miss Carey never married, and this seems to mirror Ellen’s own situation as a woman reluctant to conform to society’s expectations of settling down and having children. The first-person narration alternates with second-person passages addressed to Ellen’s best friend, who, she feels, has drifted away after marriage and motherhood.

There is much to enjoy in this reimagining of the Gothic haunted house genre. However, one key point affected my overall enjoyment of the novel. The central plot premise hinges on a twist à la M. Night Shyamalan, which I saw coming from the early chapters. Now, I don’t purport to be any more perspicacious than the next reader, which leads me to believe that Apostolides intended for us to be one step ahead of the protagonist. If that’s the case, though, I think it may be a misjudgement, as it dulls the element of surprise that might otherwise have had a greater impact—at least in my view.

That said, this is still a debut I would recommend, especially for its atmosphere and for its poignant and insightful character descriptions.

3.5*

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-homecoming-by-zoe-apostolides.html

Slow burning rural mystery
—
Describing this debut novel in any way gives the game away so I’ve tried to say almost nothing in the title. It is so much more than a rural mystery, and punches a little above its weight but the novel doesn’t quite land its final turn.

Ellen, a biography ghostwriter, is dispatched to the middle of nowhere to stay with and interview her latest subject, the elderly Catherine Carey. The place is as far from civilisation as it can be, and the empty woods, the mournful house and the woman herself are at turns welcoming and threatening. As Ellen settles down to do her job, strange events and the even stranger behaviour of her host make her glad that she’s only there for a week. It’s only when Ellen’s returned home that the mystery further unfolds, and her curiosity is whetted all over again.

For the perceptive reader, the core revelation is telegraphed very early on, which might take some of the force out of the rest of the story. Ellen is an engaging lead and her subject Miss Carey is a lovingly crafted and three-dimensional character. I really enjoyed the novel but felt the eerie elements could have been bolstered and the misdirection of the reader pushed to its limits. Overall, an entertaining read from a debut novelist.

Three and a half stars

Thank you so much NetGalley and Salt Publishing for The Homecoming by Zoë Apostolides.
I can not put into words how much I enjoyed this book! I questioned what was really going on the whole time. One of the things I loved was how the setting, the house and the surrounding area, had so much character and I loved it. I can’t wait to see what else comes from this author! This one will be sticking with me.

**Thank you to NetGalley and Salt Publishing for the eARC of this haunting title!**

Full review soon to come for this lovely & spooky debut!

4 stars!

Thank you to Net Galley for the arc copy of this book.

This was a fun and interesting read. A real wonderful gothic ghost tale.

I was drawn to this one because of the cover, honestly, but the story was a wild and fun ride.

Def reccomend this one! I'll be reading this one again when it gets published later this year.

Northumberland is an untapped goldmine of ghost stories, and this one was so well done and so well captured the natural landscapes of my home. Excellent writing and brilliant characters who didn’t fall into the stereotype of the ghost story

Note: I received a free unpublished proof of this book, for a limited time, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.

This book was one of the more straightforward ones I’ve read lately, but I don’t think that’s a mark against it. Sure, it’s not going to be awards material, but it’s a great eerie/Gothic read if you enjoy books about creepy houses.

First of all, I appreciated that this book took place in the North East of England, which is, in my humble opinion, a massively-underrated setting for books. There are plenty of eerie corners of the countryside up there, the people are friendly, and the area has its own unique history and culture that are often overlooked in speculative fiction. At the very least, it’s a nice break from yet another story about some secret magical world hidden in some tunnels underneath London.

There were some parts of the story that seemed to drag, in the sense that it took an unrealistically long amount of time for certain things to happen, but I think that’s somewhat typical and easily forgivable for a first novel. I also realize that this book is more atmospheric and slow-paced than some of the more action-filled, complicated books full of political intrigue and weird science fiction concepts that I tend to enjoy.

The main storyline—a young woman going to a creepy house to interview an older woman about her life to write her autobiography—is intriguing, and the characters’ story arcs are satisfying and well-developed. I do not want to spoil anything since it’s only about 250 pages long so I won’t talk too much about all the details. There is definitely a Gothic, foreboding overtone but the horror is not too scary for people who don’t like a lot of violence, blood, or gore. Overall, I recommend it for people who enjoy Gothic historical novels with moderate pacing.

It being labelled as a horror, I was expecting something more chilling. Instead, I found myself reading a sweet story focused on nostalgia, loneliness, and the fears of ageing. I loved the writing style and there were only a few bits that threw me off, like the use of the second person which felt unnecessary. I wasn't invested in the story itself but more in how the characters interacted with each other, to the point that you can figure out the plot twist pretty early on but it doesn't affect the enjoyment of the book.

4*5

Loved every moment of this novel. In the beginning thought it would be different, but it turned out to be much better. Loved how the author was able to mix Ellen's personal story with Catherine's in such a flowy and beautiful way. The "plot twist" at the end shocked me and left me loving the book a lot more.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me an early read of this debut novel! Apostolides is clearly a talented writer! It’s a pleasure being able to read a debut novel and get a glimpse into an author’s style. This book has many of my favorite things— ghosts, a dilapidated manor, isolation, mystery. For the most part, it was exactly what I hoped for. It was enjoyable!

The Homecoming follows Ellen as she travels to an estate in the countryside of England to interview with elderly Ms Carey in hopes of ghostwriting her memoir. The story starts incredibly strong, with atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a knife. The prose is bright but eerie, and the characters are both withholding and relatable, creating an interesting tension for the reader. I knew I liked both characters, but I could never put my finger on their motivations, which made for some fantastic character development throughout the book.

Aside from the atmosphere, I found the mystery of the house and Ms. Carey's life story a touch underdeveloped, and I almost wish this book were a hundred pages longer than it was. The description was quite decadent in the way that gothic lit often is, and Apostolides captures a sense of place so well. The ending was a touch predictable, and I think there were a few things introduced that were slightly underutilized in the narrative, namely the eels and the ghosts themselves. Otherwise, The Homecoming was a fantastic debut.

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

Being a modern take on a gothic ghost story, The Homecoming has all the ingredients of a very good old fashioned haunted house tale, but also includes a secondary plot about the young ghostwriter Ellen. Both stories interweave beautifully and address themes of loneliness, motherhood, obligations and greed. I found the fact that Ellen's story was set in London very well done as it contrast enormously with the rural, distant and secluded setting of Elver House, and yet the emotions that people feel are very similar.

I must say I particularly liked the modern part of the London life of Ellen as it was very recognizable and it offered some grounding which was very necessary after the gloomy chapters that describe Elver House and its owner Miss Carey. I also very much appreciated the ending, which I thought was very well crafted, for both storylines.

After reading this debut, the author Zoë Apostolides will certainly be an author to watch for any further publishing.

Thank you NetGalley, Salt Publishing, and the author for allowing me to be an early reader. All opinions are my own.

A slow burn but I enjoyed the ending. I went into this book blind and I’m glad I did. The slowly unfolding mystery element kept me turning the pages.