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.

Zoë Apostolides writes a strong horror novel and had that element that I was wanting and enjoyed from this type of book. It was a strong sense of isolation and that concept of a ghost story with a bit of mystery. I was engaged with the characters and how everything was used in this storyline. I really enjoyed the use of ghost-writers and how this was told in this memoir that was happening. I enjoyed how good Zoë Apostolides' writing was and how it was done in this.

I loved this book so much. A ghost-writer goes to record the memoirs of an elderly woman living in a remote and creepy manor, then things get a little bit strange. The whole novel was so tense, with an unnerving atmosphere that really captured me and had me feeling constantly on edge.

It’s a slow burn, but I was fully captivated by the two protagonists, the remote setting and the immersive writing, which made this a thoroughly transportive book. If you like a quiet read with intriguing characters, an eerie house and a claustrophobic small town setting, then I think you’d love this.

Thank you to Salt Publishing for the NetGalley arc!

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