<b>William was more like the Final Gay, except didn’t the gay characters usually die first in horror films…? Well shit.
</b>
Dual timelines between a journal written in 1939 and William in 2024 who finds it in the supposedly haunted mansion that has been left to him.
This was written with so much yearning and emotion that I was invested in the first 30%, but then it started to feel overdone.
Dnf at 50%.

Where there was horror, it was spine-tingling, but it was more focused on repetitive sleepwalking and angsty, grumpy characters.

This was not a bad book, but I just knew it was going to be a low three stars or high two stars and I am definitely slumping. I need something totally new rather than a story that has been told and rehashed, even if I do think this author would make a killer angsty historical romance.

Definitely check out other people’s reviews, because this seems to be a hit.

Arc gifted by Titan.

The Haunting of William Thorn by Ben Anderson is a truly a gothic love story that delivers chills, emotion, and atmosphere.

William is at the lowest point a person could be in their life, following the sudden death of his long-term partner Archie, who William believed had cheated on him, William is guilt-riddled and sees Stonewall Manor as his last chance for a new beginning, but of course, nothing is ever that simple.

William finds himself entwined with the tragic love story of the son of the journey intertwines with the tragic love story of two men from the 1920s, giving the narrative both poignancy and depth. I was impressed by Ben’s ability to bring to life the turmoil and emotional struggles of the characters amidst an atmosphere of eerie suspense, intrigue, and haunting mystery that only heightens those moments of intense and true connection between them.

If you’re looking for traditional gothic horror, you’re going to be disappointed as Ben moves beyond the traditional confines to weave this beautiful tapestry that illustrates grief, loss, guilt, a chilling, haunting ghost story and elements of a historic murder mystery that will truly take you on a tension filled journey through love, grief and redemption.

This book took me a few days to read which is usually abnormal for me but I am glad I got to take the time to embrace the story and the settings.

I will say the start of the book was interesting and kept me very clued in. There are things that took some time to get used to which was how the dialogue melded into the background and the characters thoughts.

I love that this story was like two love stories and three mysteries in one. At times, it did become confusing but others it worked out well in the overall complexity of the plot.

Another thing, I liked that over all the drama was well done. I did thing the plot of the cop helping to hide a legacy was interesting but I am glad for something not overly predictable.

As for the multiple different twist, they were nice but I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending. I felt like with all that work and all the pain poor William had to go through for him to bed dead pretty much since the middle of the book was very upsetting.

But I do understand why the author said it was a “HEA” because in a way it was but also, it really wasn’t. It felt like so much of the story was rushed towards the end to tie it up that it didn’t feel overly finished.

I am glad that Edward found out what happened to his family member and that he eventually did come back for William but I wish for more ending for William and Edward.


Finally, the horror aspect was really nicely done. I enjoyed being brought into this world and learning about the dark side of families.

I think ending it with a William watching how the world moved forward was really nice and seeing how it felt like before and time doesn’t really change to much and you can sometimes just exist even if you are a ghost.

I am happy with my rating and my feelings and while I wasn’t happy with the ending, I did enjoy this read.


Thank you so much for allowing me the chance to get this arc copy and review it!

Wow... First off, this book single handledly got me out of a 2 month book slump. The writing was so immersive for a horror book. I was genuinly scared during some parts and I loved that. I set the mood with music and reading at night time, but honestly I was sucked in even reading on my lunch break at work! That is how good it got me.

Let's talk to the plot, because wow. I will say I called certain, shall we say twists, and plot points. But the ending came at me like a brick. I LOVED that. It's stuck with me even after I have finished it and made me send a 15 min voice note to my best friend crashing out at 3am. I loved the dual timeline plot we had happening and I liked the journal perspective; however, I do wish we had Teddy's journal perspective to balance it out as well. The pacing was great too! I will say shit goes down around 80% in and you will not be able to put it down. I like that through out the build up though, it doesn't drag because, let's face it, they are going through hell every single day.

The characters- I loved Edward and William. They were so interesting and at times when I thought maybe Edward was a little too flat, he would open up and become a bit more 3 dimentional which really helped. Grief being central to both characters was really interesting and their different takes on the world made their contrasting journey through grief stand out even more.

Overall, if you want a book that will destroy you and build you back up but destroy you a little more after, this is the one for you!

Thank you so much Netgalley and Angry robot publishing for the eARC in exchange for an honest review~

Overview
The Haunting of William Thorn is a queer gothic horror novel about loss, the danger of assumptions, and the lengths people go to for those they love. Most of the story takes place in the current age, but a few chapters contain a subplot occurring in the 1940s. Overall, I loved the idea of this story, but I felt the execution fell short.

Pros
The story contained a bunch of gothic horror tropes and themes, including a haunted house, stormy nights, and psychological drama. Fans of classic gothic horror stories will be able to appreciate the ample “easter eggs” from works such as The Haunting of Hill House.
The novel discusses the complicated and messy ways people handle grief and the loss of loved ones. Grief can sometimes be treated as a convenient plot point for main characters to humbly suffer but ultimately move on from. The Haunting of William Thorn depicted a much more chaotic and raw picture of grief and the complicated emotions surrounding it, which was equal parts heart breaking and refreshing to see.

Cons:
The plot of this novel felt underdeveloped. While gothic horror stories usually leave elements of the plot unanswered, this typically creates lasting intrigue and mystery. However, the unanswered elements in this novel felt more like areas that hadn’t been fully fleshed out. This can be seen both in larger plot points, such as the mystery of one character’s disappearance, and small details. For example, there’s a scene where the main character find a photo of “two young boys,” but goes on the describe one boy as about 2 years old and the other as “in his early 30s.” This was such a conflicting description that I had to walk away from the story for a while.
The pacing of the story was inconsistent. The middle of the book dragged on due to repetitive and cyclical scenes involving sleep walking and seeing ghosts. The ending felt rushed and overly crammed with attempts to answer the story’s remaining plot holes.

Who Should Read It:
fans of complicated and messy characters, lovers of gothic horror stories, and those interested in heart wrenching stories about queer characters.

**Thanks to NetGalley and Angry Robots for sending me a copy of this book.

What a ride! I adored this book. The romance, the mystery, the drama of it all! That said the first 50 pages made me struggle. I wanted to stop reading but once I got into it, it was fun!
My Rating: 3.5 stars

I’ve got to say this was a little bit of a departure for me because I am a weenie and horror elements will make me sleep with the light on for weeks. But dammit, Ben Alderson did something truly magical with this horror romance (really a gothic romance but the scary elements were a little more intense!). I didn’t expect to feel so many emotions involving grief and loss but this book almost did me in.

I really don’t want to spoil anything because part of what makes this such a phenomenal read is the way I didn’t really know WHAT was going on or what the end would entail. But I have to say this was such a wonderful melding of gothic, ghostly creepiness and swoony, heart racing romance.

5 stars.
Oh my god! That ending had me in tears and I’m welling up as I’m writing this review. This book destroyed me but I’m happy about it. This is my first Ben Alderson and I’ll be reading more of his books.
William inherits Hanbury Manor from his deceased ex-partner, Archie and goes to check the house out. He meets Edward, the mysterious man who has links to the manor. William is being haunted by past residents of the house. Together, William and Edward have to uncover the truth of what occurred at Hanbury Manor is the 1940s.
This is full of twists and turns, the plot is plotting, you think you’ve got it all worked out but you haven’t.
The relationship between William and Edward has hurt and comfort and gives all the right feels.
Felt like a high 4 stars until that ending and had to be bumped up to 5. Honestly, I feel as though I need a cathartic cry.
Thanks to NetGalley and Angry Robot for the eARC.

The Haunting of William Thorn is a beautifully atmospheric and emotional story that combines ghostly chills with themes of love, grief and redemption. After the devastating betrayal and sudden death of his long-term partner Archie, William is consumed with guilt. When he unexpectedly inherits a crumbling manor in the village of Stonewall, he hopes to rebuild his life, but the hostile locals and the presence of a restless spirit make his new beginning far from simple.

The haunted house setting is wonderfully crafted, full of tension, mystery and gothic unease. Yet the book is more than a traditional ghost story. At its core, it explores the weight of grief, the complexity of guilt and the way the past continues to shape the present.

William’s journey intertwines with the tragic love story of two men from the 1920s, giving the narrative both poignancy and depth.
Ben Alderson captures the emotional turmoil of his characters with sensitivity, balancing eerie suspense with heartfelt moments of connection. The relationship between William and Edward adds another layer of intrigue, as trust and secrets collide in unexpected ways.

This is a haunting and tragic book that will stay with readers long after finishing, not only for its chilling atmosphere but also for its moving portrayal of loss and the possibility of peace.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Angry Robot books for this arc!!!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

This book follows William Thorn who has been given the deeds to Hanbury Manor after his fiance, Archie, passed away. When William gets to the manor he starts hearing strange noises and people in town tell him of the ghost stories. When Edward shows up saying the house is his they embark on a journey to uncover the history of the manor, while also dealing with secrets of their own.

I loved this book so much. The story explored grief, love and trauma in such a beautiful way. THE ENDING!! THE ENDING!! I was in shock, I honestly sobbed because WHY. This book had so many twists and turns throughly it and honestly get me on my toes the whole time! William and Edward’s grief was explored so devastanginly well!

William is looking for a place to hide from the world for a while. In possession of a house in the Cotswolds, he decides to visit for a week to see what the future holds for the house, and him.

In classic Gothic fashion, the house is not settled, and things keep spiralling to odder and odder places. For starters there is Edward who shows up at the house uninvited and unwanted, forced to take shelter from a storm. Edwards starts to seem like the lesser of two evils as William faces noises in the house, things he keeps seeing out of the corner of his eye, and bouts of sleepwalking. Finding out about the suicide of a former occupant and a disappearance of another, William and Edward work to identify what the house wants from them to try and end the hauntings.

This was just the right amount of scary for me. The pacing was good, and the foreshadowing was very cleverly done so that I noticed things that seem odd early on, but in retrospect make perfect sense, which is form of clever writing that I really enjoy.

Thanks to Netgalley a copy of the book in return for a review.

Huge thanks to the publisher and Net Galley for the ARC! This novel is a gothic horror that is perfect for fans of Netflix’s Haunting of Hill House. The atmosphere is perfectly constructed and there were times I was legitimately freaked out reading this on my own. While it’s isn’t necessarily “scary” the tension is pitch perfect.

The story follows a young man grieving an awful loss, who escapes into an abandoned estate he has the misfortune of inheriting. There are as many twists and turns in the plot as there are in old rambling houses. There were enough clues that when I spotted a reveal or two just before they happened, I was able to feel pleased with myself. The mystery is deep enough that I never got bored, and it was hard for me to put the book down.

Did I love our protagonist William? I didn’t. There were in fact a few times where I would have been okay with something awful happening to him. But, I was quite taken with the mysterious and charming Edward, right up until the end. And the end is so perfectly done that I admit I was shocked. I saw that I had 20 pages left and I was not sure the author could offer me a satisfactory ending in that amount of time. And yet, it was everything I needed.

I have adored Ben Alderson's writing for years, but The Haunting of William Thorn didn't quite hit the mark for me. I really did not like William, and ended up DNFing.

Queerness : Queer Mcs and Scs
Associated Song : Elsas Song By The Amazing Devil
Content warning: Blood , death , grief , suicide attempt

Applied for this ARC on NetGalley and so glad I did! It's been a while since I had a 5-star read that really gripped me like this book did and made me physically sit up in an "Oh my god" stance. This is the second book of Ben's that I have read, but a few of his are on my ever-growing TBR! It was well-written to the point it grasps you in a chokehold.

Ben, you are paying for my therapy - I have many feelings about this book.

Bravo, BRAVO!

(Give me 19 more, thanks)

The Haunting of William Thorn was... an interesting read. I disliked the protagonist, William, very much, which made it a hard read. He didn't really become likeable to me until the last fourth of the book. Edward, the main love interest, is great and made it worth reading in my opinion. There's a great deal of intrigue here, wondering what happened in the house, which also made it worth reading. The ending is disappointing to me, but it wraps nicely just the same, so I can't fault it too much.

It feels so rare for me lately to find a book that I cannot put down, but this had me sitting up to the wee hours of the morning, totally engrossed with every word. A hauntingly beautiful and atmospheric tale, this left me devastated in the best ways possible and was such a perfect read to get me in the mood for good gothic horror and spooky vibes as we drift closer into Autumn.


The Haunting of William Thorn takes us to Hanbury Manor, an old, abandoned house which is said to be haunted by the inhabitants of the surrounding village of Stonewall. Inherited by William Thorn as a result of a tragedy involving his ex, William’s presence in Hanbury Manor kicks off the unravelling of hidden secrets, dark pasts, and the truths behind those whose spirits remain at the house.

This story follows two timelines: one in the present and the other told through letters of a previous resident, and it was a wild ride from the first page to the last. I loved the dynamics between William and Edward, and the way their snarky and tense relationship, with just the right amount of wit and banter, developed throughout the plot flowed naturally, albeit with a tad too much miscommunication at times for my liking.

The plot flowed like a good horror setting should: vividly detailed and completely enthralling - with a perfect balance of eerie gothic moments and spine-tingling horror scenes. It was so easy to immerse myself in the story and the character's emotions, and the pacing was just right for keeping me hooked the entire time. And don’t even get me started on the plot twists, so fantastic in the way they played out, I haven’t been able to get them out of my head.

This is 100% a perfect read for a dark autumnal evening.

Thank you so much to Angry Robot and NetGalley for the ARC

So… The Haunting of William Thorn completely messed with my emotions in the best worst way possible.

We’ve got:
🏚️ A creepy old manor that’s basically a character of its own
👻 Ghosts who are way too good at making you cry
💔 A main character who’s grieving, messy, and sometimes very annoying
💕 A tragic queer romance in the past timeline plus a modern one with its own complications
😱 A plot twist that made me sit there like ????

The vibes? Gothic, emotional, haunting, and atmospheric. If you love sad gays in haunted houses (my new favourite niche subgenre), this is basically catnip.

Pros: the atmosphere is perfection. You can smell the damp old house and feel the candlelight flickering. The ghosts are tragic and tender, not just scary. And the dual timeline with Teddy and Robert broke me.

Cons: William, our main character, is sometimes frustrating and the middle dragged a bit. Also, the big twist near the end… you’ll either love it or scream into your pillow.

Overall: It’s emotional damage disguised as a gothic novel, and honestly I’d recommend it if you want to cry, feel spooky, and maybe throw your book across the room once or twice.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4 out of 5) for me because even with its flaws, it lingered in my head like a ghost that refuses to leave.

I knew I wanted to read this when I read "queer" and "ghosts" in the same sentence and it absolutely scratched my never-ending itch for queer ghost stories and I was very pleasantly surprised that it didn't evolve the way I thought it was going to.

For anyone starting this book, you may, as I did, find yourself really quite despising the main character, William, and questioning if you want to continue when he is so viscerally unpleasant, especially to the apparently endlessly patient Edward. What I say to you is KEEP READING because your feelings will change and then some.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC.

I want to thank NetGalley and Ben Alderson for access to an advanced copy of this book.

I have read multiple books from this author before, and let me tell you, this is their best work yet! The suspense between William and Edward throughout the whole book kept me coming back for more, and I found their chemistry to be incredibly endearing. There were many moments where I would go from laughing at the snarky comments to feeling heartbroken for everyone involved as we learn more about the backstories of all of the characters and how they intertwine with one another.

Being the first horror book from Ben Alderson, I was unsure how the writing style that I have come to expect from them would translate to the horror genre as the previous works I’ve read have been romantasy books. There are some romance aspects to this book, but they are not at the forefront compared to his previous works, which I found myself enjoying more than I anticipated.

There were one or two moments while I was ready where I found keeping track of the timeline and the sequences of events a little hard to follow, but rereading those parts helped me make more sense of things. I do also feel like this is also intentional as it adds to the confusion and sense of reality breaking down while reading from the perspective of William Thorn. I found the pacing of the book to be nearly perfect, giving time for the moments where supernatural events were occurring to unsettle me and make me question what will happen next.

I thoroughly enjoyed this work overall, not anticipating the twists and ending in its entirety, and it left me with a bittersweet feeling for William and Edward. It makes me hopeful for future horror books from Ben Alderson, as his ability to create characters that I find myself falling in love with and wanting the best ending for, to be consistent and I keep coming back for more! I eagerly anticipate having the finished copy in my hands once it is released! It will be right at home with the dozen or so other books I own from this author. 4.5 out of 5 stars!

I had read a lot of favourable reviews about this book on Goodreads leading up to getting my hands on a copy, so when it finally arrived I was really keen to read this book. Many people had written about how they were impressed with the horror aspect of it, some calling it terrifying, while others praised its haunted house vibes. Others had compared it to “The Haunting of Hill House”, noting the feelings of melancholy and grief throughout. With the additional mix of romance and historical flashbacks, it felt like there was a lot to look forward to with this book. And that’s probably where I went wrong. I went in with too high expectations.

Unfortunately for me I don’t think it hit the horror note very well. Part of the reason was I didn’t feel the author was able to build up the “creepy suspense” that surrounds most good horror stories. It felt like it was written as if the author was describing the visuals of a horror film itself rather than writing this as a book. For example, when William suddenly wakes up to the cry of someone shouting the word “out”, that single word does not shock or scare the reader when it’s just one word on a page. In a horror movie that would no doubt have been a “jump scare” but in a book you need more than that to get the frights. A single word is not how you build up fear in your reader. Neither is interjecting phrases like “lightning flashed outside” at key points in a scene. That type of stuff doesn’t make the reader jump or a scene feel more creepy in the same way it would make a cinema goer jump at the visual effect of lightning at a well timed moment within a scene. I felt the author needed to gradually build up fear and tension in the reader, making them feel uneasy and start to see things hidden in the darkness around them. Just read William Peter Blatty and you will soon see how terrifying that can be with just the written word.

One of the other things I struggled with was the voice of Robert. Now this could just be me having read a lot of historical fiction, but the way the author wrote Robert sounded like he was from a much earlier time, the late 19th century really. In fact I had to keep reminding myself of the year of his diary entry… 1939 not 1911. When he discussed the oncoming war, it was like he was talking about the Great War (though the author had Robert refer to it as the 1st war) where Class and rank went hand in hand. His prose were too floral and “sensible” and didn’t feel like they were from the 1940s at all. Many authors when they write about these periods will often make a decision to write in more contemporary language rather than try to impersonate, often incorrectly, the language of the period. I think Ben Alderson should have done that here. Maybe others will read it and not have a problem but it just seemed to jar me out of those parts of the book. And they were some of my favourite parts, particularly the opening of the book… which in fairness was really well written and probably set my expectations a little too high when I think about it.

But ultimately the two things that really didn’t work for me were the two main (present day) characters and the plot! I didn’t feel any chemistry between the two leads and found it very hard to like the narrator, William. That’s not normally a deal breaker with me but he just seemed angry most of the time which made him very unattractive as a romantic lead. And the plot had lots of holes in it with key devices not making much logical sense, and seeming to be introduced just to force the story in a particular direction.

As an overall reading experience I did find it quite a dull read. The horror wasn’t scary enough, the romance wasn’t engaging enough and the dialogue was somewhat on the flat side. With authors like Ashlyn Drewek excelling at this type horror-romance writing, I found myself focusing on all the things that weren’t working in this book. I kept wishing she’d written this book instead of Ben Alderson, as she would have completely nailed the horror, the romance and the dialogue.