DNF Review

The Decadence follows a group of twenty-something's making a break for freedom during the COVID pandemic in the UK, to a somewhat dilapidated grand house, owned by one nepo baby in the group.

I eventually had to DNF this book, an unreliable narrator and clichéd characters made this book instantly forgettable and bothersome in equal parts. It was a sad interpretation of elitist culture, feeling rather scathing at times. The group arguing gave me a sour taste in my mouth, seemingly trying to sound realistic, but something wasnt quite right about it. The prose was extremely pretentious, offsetting the sometimes bawdy conversations.

There were few hints of supernatural in the book, which was a shame, as the writing style would have actually suited a horror story, it's almost bardic, a descriptive style of prose. This book could have been a humorous take on the horror genre (not gothic horror, it was not atmospheric enough for that). Something akin to Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, but with ghosts. Alas, it did not deliver.

The premise of this story being a group of friends in an isolated house, with queer characters sounded phenomenal. However, I feel it was slightly flat. I think there were too many characters and the story was overlooked by toxic friendships and politics of which did not really end up being relevant much to the bigger picture. There was no real horror like I was expecting and the ending caught me off guard and felt rushed. However, I did enjoy the slow burn and setting of this story and found it decent enough. Not much to say on this one, it was worth the read just not what I expected.

I have mixed feelings about this book. Although it had a slow start, I really enjoyed the opening and was intrigued by where it seemed to be heading.

That said, the horror element felt underdeveloped and ultimately underwhelming. It was as if the story couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. I think the author should have either fully leaned into the horror or dropped it altogether in favor of exploring the group’s tangled, often toxic relationships. The dynamic between these insufferable yet compelling friends, trapped together in a big, eerie house, had the potential for some great drama, and it started out in that direction.

Instead, much of the book ended up focusing on the group constantly getting high, debating politics, and bickering, all leading to a supernatural climax that didn’t quite land for me.

Still, I enjoyed it for what it was, which is why I’ve given it 3 stars. The book had real potential and I wish the ending hadn’t felt so abrupt.


Plot summary:
A group of friends, disillusioned and restless during lockdown, escape to an abandoned country estate once owned by one of their relatives. Hoping for a carefree getaway filled with drugs and sunshine, they instead find old tensions resurfacing, strained friendships, hidden betrayals, and unresolved conflicts.

As they try to recapture their youth, the eerie presence of Holt House begins to assert itself. The boundary between reality and hallucination blurs, leaving them unsure whether their unraveling is due to substances, personal turmoil, or something far more sinister. Haunted by both the past and the present, their time at Holt House proves transformative
and possibly deadly.

Thank you for the opportunity to read the book as an arc.

I’m going to rate this a 3/5 read. Overall it was not bad just very slow and the end was rushed I had to read it twice.
I felt the characters were all morally grey which is good however they were shallow, we barely have any of their backstory or even a glimpse of their personality.
It had so much potential but the supernatural part was just so strange.
Some political stuff was stated but just forgotten deeper into the book
Most of them were annoying like why is everyone treating the MC as if she’s a servant but they offer her substances and then ask her to be part of them.

I honestly did not see the point to add all the somewhat relationships between characters since they weren’t that deep and felt rushed.

The Decadence by Leon Craig is set to be published by Spectre/Hodder and Stoughton on 25th September 2025.

DNF review

The book follows Jan and her friend Theo, who decide to go to Holt House (the manor Theo inherited from a great-uncle) with their friends for a bender mid-lockdown, under the guise of renovating the old house.

For a story about a group of people older than me (I'm 24, they are in their late twenties/early thirties), the protagonists are incredibly immature and behave more like teenagers, and started to grate on me almost immediately. I understand that this is a trope in horror fiction (Until Dawn springs to mind) but there are ways to write annoying characters who are interesting and I personally didn't find this group interesting enough to make up for the annoyance. By turns unrealistic, pompous and in denial, there's just not enough there to like them in my opinion, especially Jan’s attitude towards the genocide of Palestinians. Ursie is the most bearable of the group and Jan treats her awfully in favour of her strange sexual hangups involving Nadya and this and the group's drug taking become tiresome very soon into the novel.

The horror aspects of the novel take quite a while to even hint at an appearance and where I had reached, 50% of the way through, there was just a very subtle mention at this, certainly not enough to pique my interest.

Having read Linea Maja Ernst’s Waist Deep after I had decided to take a break from The Decadence, it made me feel even more validated in doing so as the premises are somewhat similar, minus the horror elements. Waist Deep was more successful, for me, even just due to the more likeable and realistic characters.

I did not finish The Decadence and for that reason cannot recommend it but I can see why readers would enjoy it, the prose is beautiful and the exploration of the effects of COVID-19 and lockdowns is successful, I just could not get past the characters.

Unfortunately not for me, thank you for arc but all in all confusing and could have been so much better without the indulgence of overindulgence of characters saying that that's mainly what decadence is about.

A blend of literary fiction about drug-fuelled excess and inadvisable sexcapades, with a gothic horror reflecting on race and belonging in modern Britain. However, I found that in trying to hit both marks, the novel falls between them and misses suceeding fully to be either.

2.5 stars
Ah, this started out so strong and fell apart as it went along. I really did not like any of the characters, they were all insufferable but not developed enough to be interesting. Luke and Kara especially were two dimensional and frustrating to read about. Theo could have been interesting if he was explored further, but served no real additional purpose to the story.

While I enjoyed the writing at the start, it eventually felt overly complex. The addition of covid, lockdown, politics and relationships didn’t add anything of interest or value to the plot. I really wish there was more attention on the house and its mystery, I thought I’d be reading a ghost story or something spooky, but really the only scary thing was these characters and their lack of awareness.

This book, for me, unfortunately did not live up to its promises of queer gothic horror.
Other than being set in a big old house and having some generally mid range creepy ghost-like things happen, up until 51% (where I DNF'd) at least, there is no real horror or anything else I would consider gothic.

I found this to actually be a really modern lit fic, focused around a group of (frankly, terrible) people who are drawn together by the opportunity to do all kinds of drugs in aforementioned big old house, set during an early covid lockdown.
However, if you like those gritty, miserable, modern, and lit-fic-y reads then this book will probably really be up your alley.

The characters themselves were not ones I managed to grow attached to, I did have a soft spot for Ursie and a small one for Kara (who I would say are the most balanced in an overall unbalanced bunch, the rest just being very one note). The queer relationships in here were so inherently negative (not that they have to be a positive shining representation) that it was just not believeable or enjoyable to learn about them. I was not rooting for anyone, just holding out hope that they'd all go home, find therapists via zoom and never speak to one another again.

I struggled with the writing, in some parts there is a wordy poetic prose (going to the effort of calling a piece of toast rough-hewn) and other times, the omnipotent third person that follows our MC, Jan, was a little underwhelming (e.g. She thought she saw someone in the orchard but decided it must be a fox. End quote).
Oddly, I found myself thinking I might have enjoyed this more if we got a first person perspective, as the third person still appears to be the unreliable narrator that is Jan, but to me it read a little disjointed-perhaps if it were more Jan's first person perspective, I'd have leaned in to the character more. Jan herself was a particularly potent mix of self righteous and self loathing, and whilst I normally enjoy a morally grey or even morally bankrupt MC, I found Jan unlikeable and really frustrating to read. Again, I oddly think leaning in to that and going first person would've helped me experience that cruel character more.

I will admit I did find the political references in the book to be a bit heavy handed and almost forced, every now and then there's an opinion strongly thrown down by a character about something real world like covid, genocide, political parties, war, etc, you name it, and then basically nothing comes of it-it neither furthers character relationships or the plot, it simply makes the characters even more unlikeable.
I think a lot of it could have been removed and there be no change in the group dynamic-there doesn't seem to be a need for it.

For me the plot was meandering about, which was not for me personally but if you like something really slow paced, then you might enjoy this more.

Ultimately, I don't think this does what it says on the tin.

2.5, rounded up.
I requested the ARC of The Decadence after reading the synopsis - and thank you to Hodder & Stoughton for the E-ARC before I get going!
A gothic horror, blurred lines between drugs and the supernatural, ominous forces, and a house with its own sinister history and creeping menace? It all sounded right up my alley.

Set during the COVID lockdowns, the book captures the languid, claustrophobic atmosphere of that first pandemic summer. The unsettling times spent in an unsettling house, anxious about the situation as well as being caught, had me on my seat. Despite the story unfolding over just a few days, it definitely evoked that drawn-out, hazy sense of time standing still. Leon Craig's writing is certainly gorgeous, highly decorative and intentional. The touch on themes such as addiction, privilege, betrayal, self-destruction, manipulation, current issues in the world, identity in terms of queerness and race (and more), were all intriguing - but there were perhaps too many different things going on in the one book, as well as the horror, leaving the focus feeling a little missing?

Unfortunately, I found the horror and supernatural elements underwhelming. It’s a slow burn - promisingly so at first until it simmers on for a while too long - the final inferno into chaos was sudden and underdeveloped, I feel like I blinked and lost track of what was happening to be honest. The shift into horror lacked the build-up needed to make the climax as meaningful as it could have been.

Character relationships seemed more central than the horror, which could have worked, but I struggled to keep track of who was who, and lacked reason to care about any of them. Perhaps I'm just not in the right financial bracket to find them, their issues (or their various states of intoxication) relatable or compelling.

There’s definitely potential here: a haunting premise, a heavy atmosphere, and moments of critical observation. But sadly, it got lost for me in murky pacing, lack of focus and an emotional distance from the characters.

This book took me a while to get into, but once I was in I was hooked. Set during the first lockdown of 2020, a group of friends in their late 20s decide to stay at Holt House, the ancestral home of one of the group. Whilst there, many bizarre things happen and the friendships are tested. It’s a creepy read in parts, and I found the reveal about 80% in quite chilling. It was a great read worth persevering through the slow start.

I found it difficult to connect with this one, as the characters were hard to differentiate at times. None of them particularly stood out for me, unfortunately. The writing itself was lovely though, and beautifully descriptive.

The Decadence is a gothic horror story that offers a new take on the country house novel, as a group of friends flee to an old country house during lockdown. Jan and her friends are floundering, and now lockdown has made things even worse as they can't even party to escape their lives. But there is one option: a couple of weeks at the old country house Theo inherited from his great uncle. Fuelled by as many drugs as they could bring, things start falling apart almost immediately, as their interpersonal dramas surface, but quickly it seems to Jan that there's something else going on, and maybe the house isn't the safe retreat they imagined.

This is a book that takes a lot of other works and reinvents them into something new, as Leon Craig discusses in her note at the end of the book. The narrative perspective (entirely from Jan's point of view, a woman trying to fit in despite being a queer Jewish woman in a upper class English environment) and characters are from the country house novel, even pushing as far as (again, as Craig states) The Secret History as a kind of country house novel without the house, but with the in-group rarified from others. The haunted house side of things easily calls to mind Shirley Jackson, House of Leaves, and Tell Me I'm Worthless, and the latter in particular feels like a good comparison for this book, with The Decadence having less of the horror but a similar connection between the evils of Britain and the haunting of its seats of power.

The story itself is pretty simple, with messy characters and drama between them building to a climax alongside the weird things happening in the house, and being forced together in a claustrophobic setting adding to all that. It starts in a slow burn gothic style, mostly focused on the characters, before things ramp up as they all take an experimental drug. Sometimes this kind of book can lack a dramatic ending, but The Decadence builds to something that feels in-keeping with the atmosphere it has created (though I think having read Tell Me I'm Worthless primed me to expect something like what happens). Due to being from Jan's perspective, you never quite know what was going on with the other characters, which again, suits the genre, and also the overarching theme of belonging and what is knowable.

I thought from hearing about it that The Decadence would be my sort of book, with its combination of haunted house horror, the Brideshead-style novel, and a queer protagonist, and I'm happy that I wasn't disappointed. Craig uses the range of books that influenced her to create a new version of a gothic country house that fits into the claustrophobia of lockdown (which I've not mentioned otherwise in the review, but I liked how it came into the novel, and how it didn't) and explores the messiness of belonging (or not) in terms of identity, money, and power in modern Britain.

This one unfortunately wasn't for me. The prose was beautiful, but I could not connect to any of the characters and put this one down at 30%. It very much felt like one of the books that runs on vibes, which is certainly going to appeal to some readers.

The Decadence is such a good read. A classic 'is this a ghost story or are these people just awful' with a ton of self-centred-ness, arrogance and drugs mixed in. Honestly, I kind of wasn't rooting for anyone in this book, they were all slightly the worst, and I loved it! Also a fresh take on lockdown life in a dark way. Brilliant.

While the writing style was utterly stunning, and as the name suggests, completely decadent, I found the story itself to be pretty underwhelming.

It’s a a pretty slow book, difficult to comprehend with murky character dynamics and distinctions which make it hard to determine who is who which was incredibly frustrating, to the point I wanted to just give up on the book all together. The book was just trying too hard to be edgy and different which resulted in a pretty empty book without much substance.

If this was more well thought out, I think this could have been amazing. Another round of editing really is needed.

I'm afraid this one didn't work for me.
I was confused by who was who, how they all knew each other and what their relationships were.
What I did know, was that I didn't like any of them.

That was just the first half.

I enjoyed this at the start. However it quickly descended into too much drug use and the ending seemed like it was from a different book entirely. It was rather like a b movie by the end

wow... this was a bit slow to start, hard to follow and then just a bit anticlimactic to end. Also these characters deserve bad things happening to them.

2.5⭐️

I have a lot of feelings about this book and I’m very disappointed with how the book eventually turned out. it had so much potential and I could see elements where it could have been good but it just wasn’t the author didn’t focus on the aspects they where writing well and just kept changing the vibe of the book

The relationships between the characters where not very clear and seemed to blend together in some places, I wasn’t sure who had what relationship with who

the characters are all very flawed and kinda shitty people in a lot of ways which gave them potential to be very interesting but they where kind of just annoying tho I do feel like they felt like real people just made 100% more insufferable. Theo was a very interesting character but the author didn’t explore his character very well I feel like his character could have linked well with the plot but the author didn’t explore that and just made him a really shallow character.

I’m not sure how I felt about the consistent mention of politics in the book I’m not sure it was needed I don’t think it added anything to the book and just seemed to be there to express the authors views/ add conflict between the characters, it could have been used more subtly to get the point across which I think would have worked better with the book if the author truly felt it was needed instead of the very heavy handed blunt way it was actually portrayed

The book sets the vibe well, I felt Jan’s confusion and fear over what was happening and not knowing whether it was just the drugs, The others messing with her or something else. I think the choice to write this book from one single unreliable narrator was a really good decision it built the vibe well and had the reader questioning what was real or not just as much as the character.

This book seems to have 2 very different writing styles within it one that is very blunt and kinda of spoon feeds information to the reader and another that is quiet flowery and a bit unclear, the former being mainly when talking about politics and the characters feelings towards different things and the latter being the actual horror element these 2 styles don’t go together very well and feel like they should be 2 completely different books. Some of the transitions from one scene to the next are also quite abrupt and sometimes feel like there is something missing in between and sometimes they focused and overly described things that weren’t really necessary

I hated the ending it felt abrupt and kinda pointless and made no sense with the rest of the book. The ending was just so rushed and spent no time explaining why anything happened or making it clear what happened really it was just a really bad ending

The overall premise of the book is good and the horror aspects of the book where interesting and engaging, but everything else within the book was just lacking or just felt out of place, anytime it wasn’t focusing on the horror elements the writing felt all over the place and even tho the concept of all the characters where interesting most of the time they where all annoying and their conversations seemed odd. It felt like the author had an idea but got bored halfway through so just decided to create a really quick ending.

Rep- sapphic mc, sapphic side characters, Jewish fmc, poc side character

TW- self harm (past), attempted rape/SA

Thank you NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the digital arc