*4.5 stars*

I cannot believe this book is a debut! The Homecoming has everything I love in a ghost story. The perfectly paced slow burn and creepy but beautiful atmosphere pulled me in from the first page, and reminded me of some of the classics of the genre. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I hope to see more stories from this author in the future! I would recommend The Homecoming for readers who enjoy slow burn gothic books with emotional depth.

Thank you to NetGalley & Salt Publishing for the arc! All thoughts & opinions in the review are my own.

Thanks to NetGalley and Salt Publishing for the advanced read!

I really enjoyed this atmospheric horror, perfect for readers like me who prefer a slower pace, small cast, and a reveal that will leave you unsettled but still able to sleep at night (probably 😅) I actually did not figure out the twist ahead of time which made the ending more fun for sure. The imagery of the elvers and all the facts we learn about them were fascinating. The subplot with Ellen’s friend didn’t weave into the story naturally for me until the very end so I would have liked to draw a more obvious connection between those memories and Ellen’s experiences at Elver House. However, I think this is a fantastic debut novel and I’d love to read more from this author in the future!

A moody, damp, dark, gothic, feminist tale and with eels for flavor. (I kind of wish there had been more eels to be honest.)

The writing style is perfect for the tone of the book, descriptive and thoughtful. I will be thinking about this book for a while.

4.5 stars. I clocked what was going on about half way. I think it took me longer to figure out why we were getting the flashbacks about her friend than to figure out the main plot. Then it all weaves together. It isn’t going to be for everyone. If you are looking for a scary story to tell in the dark this isn’t for you. But it you are looking for an eerie brooding tale of the inner lives of women (one where there are eels), you will feel at home in this story.

'The Homecoming' by Zoë Apostolides messed up with my mind like no other book. I've read several haunting tales before but never have I been so startled by the discovery of the fulcrum of the narrative. Almost 80% of the story went on in such a lumbering sort of way that on several occasions I wished things would speed up a little. But now on retrospection, I see what a brilliant tactic it was on the part of the author to ultimately thrust you into the tumbling gyre of secrets and mystery once the layers around them started unraveling.

Ellen is a ghost-writer who has been sent to Elver House to record the past memories of Catherine Carey and ultimately write a memoir on her behalf. When she arrives on the estate, everything is a haze and honestly, I'd run for my life on the very first walk to the manor if I was her. But then I guess that's why I'm not the protagonist of the novel and she is.

Initially I wanted to know so much more, to see more, but towards the end I sort of leaned into the acceptance and understanding that this is exactly how life is. Not every secret is unearthed, not every question in answered. There're things beyond our comprehension that are as much a part of this world as us, and the only thing we can do is lay a hand gently on their presence, and keep living alongside them.

The novel is about a lot of things, but mostly it's about how hauntingly tender memories and love can be. It's about spindly, liberating, intertwining female friendships that span generations, and the loneliness that can grip you both at the centre of a hustling and bustling city and a deserted, dilapidated manor house. It's about eels and hunger and freedom, and the obfuscation and associated vulnerability that comes with age, especially in the case of women. But mostly it's about learning to care about the humans that we come in contact with, even when our stays in their life's journey might be only for a moment or so.

In the end we all become stories, and may be we write because every story deserves to be heard. I genuinely wish I could give a tight hug to Catherine.

A slow burn gothic setting in the style of M. Night Shyamalan. The setting is claustrophobic, forbidding, with an ever growing sense of wrongness. I mistakenly believed that the pace of this book was slow, only to realize that the plot was coiling around me the entire time.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for this ARC, this is one I will be thinking about for a while.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC. I enjoyed the book a lot. It has a strong plot and great characters. This was a phenomenal read and very engaging. I enjoyed the stories pacing and outcome of the MC’s journey.

Can't believe this is a debut! It's atmospheric, twisty, unsettling and slippery, with beautiful imagery and a claustrophobic sense of foreboding. Struggled to put it down; it gets its hooks in you from the get go and turns up the narrative heat so subtly you don't realise til it bubbles over. Absolutely exceptional writing. So grateful to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC; can't wait to see this book be released into the world.

I really enjoyed reading The Homecoming by Zoë Apostolides. The book had a captivating storyline that kept me engaged from start to finish. The characters were well-developed and relatable, making it easy to connect with their experiences and emotions.
I appreciated the insightful exploration of family dynamics and the complexities of returning to one's roots. The writing style was descriptive and lyrical, painting vivid pictures of the landscapes and settings in which the story took place.
Overall, I would give this book 4 stars because while I found it engaging and thought-provoking, there were moments where the pacing felt a bit slow. Nonetheless, I would highly recommend this novel to anyone looking for a heartfelt and immersive read.

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.

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.

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.

I had a suspicion that I would fall in love with this book 😭🫂 A huge thank you Salt Publishing and NetGalley for the advanced copy read of this hauntingly gorgeous book.

I was captivated by the beautiful writing style, the steady pacing of the chapters and the relatable quotes about life's transistions written throughout this Gothic horror masterpiece and that truly made the reading experience deeply memorable, and emotionally felt 🖤

Just waiting to get my hands on a physical copy and excited to read anything Zoë's releases next 👀 What a debut!!! 🙌

This ended up being a book that I enjoyed more than I thought would. It's a ghost story / history tale. I enjoyed the spookiness, and the prose was beautiful. I even loved the cover. I will be buying this one.

"The Homecoming" is a slow burn ghost story, with a smattering of the gothic sensibilities of an old, crumbling manor house, a larger peek into the lives of two women, and touch of eels. I enjoyed it quite a bit, as I needed a slower paced, introspective story after the ramshackle pace of my last read.

Ellen is a young, modern woman, working in London as a ghost-writer, when she goes on assignment to a forgotten manor house in Northumberland to interview the elderly spinster, Miss Carey, who lives there alone. It's a week-long assignment, after which Ellen will return to London to ghost write Miss Carey's memoire.

But the situation is a little bit off from the get-go. There's no road to the house, and one must walk the final path on foot. The house is seemingly abandoned, and when Miss Carey does finally show up, she is forgetful and seemingly out of sorts. There was a passage in the story where Ellen hears Miss Carey's shuffling down the hall, and I half-expected (and entirely wanted) the shuffling sound to come from the eel-feet of Miss Carey! Alas, that was not the case, as the eels in the story remained firmly in their river.

Apostolides' writing is quite lovely, and the descriptions of the manor and its former life are vivid and real. Sometimes it felt a bit jarring when Ellen's story suddenly introduced the second person "you" into the narrative, and I quickly understood that Ellen was also writing to her childhood friend in the city, from whom she is estranged. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that this is much more than a ghost story, but it is also a story about the choices that women make, when they choose to remain unmarried and childless in the face of familial or work obligation, in contrast to the more natural lifecycle that the eels represent.

Overall, I'm really glad that I picked up this book (thanks to those eel-feet!), and that Netgalley and Christopher at Salt Publishing allowed me the opportunity for an early read. I thought this was wonderful.

For a debut novel this book was good! However I would not say this is Horror maybe mystery or suspense but in my opinion not horror.

Short summary, Ghost-writer sent to record the memoirs of an elderly woman living in a remote Northumberland manor. Elver House is dilapidated, its faded beauty falling to ruin.

While reading this book you will constantly feel like something is coming or going to happen and then when the twist happens you may or may not see it coming. I enjoyed it though and it didn't take me long to figure it out!

This book was a slow burn with a gothic writing style and the author's writing is beautiful and made the book much more enjoyable to read.

This book is a captivating and immersive read from start to finish. The writing is engaging, the pacing well-balanced, and the characters are richly developed with relatable emotions and motivations. The story unfolds in a way that keeps the reader hooked, offering just the right mix of tension, heart, and thought-provoking themes.

I love spooky, dank old country houses full of secrets, I love well-constructed stories with something to say, and I really love when an author manages to combine the two. I’m especially excited about this book because it’s the first time I’ve been approved for a NetGalley ARC, and I was lucky enough to get a book I enjoyed. Zoë Apostolides’ debut, The Homecoming, is a skin of slow-burn horror mystery spread over the bones of a deeper narrative about how modern society offers women the freedom to be and do anything yet seems to resent it when we’re unwilling to use that freedom to everyone’s benefit but our own.

Ellen is a ghostwriter who has been hired to write the memoirs of Catherine Carey, an elderly woman who lives alone in her family’s remote ancestral estate, Elver House. Ellen quickly runs into snags completing the interview process that she normally uses to collect the details for a memoir; navigating the ups and downs of her subjects’ lives with sensitivity in order to get them to open up is the core of her job, but Catherine is at turns forthcoming about her past and ominously tight-lipped according to her own whims. Ellen’s time in the house is punctuated by events that might be unremarkable or easily explicable in another context, yet set against the backdrop of an unfamiliar and secluded environment, they take on a sinister quality. As she gets to know Catherine and the house, it becomes apparent that something about the whole situation is off, and her task becomes as much about unraveling the mystery of Elver House as it is about preserving Catherine’s story.

Apostolides takes her time, deftly building a tense, eerie atmosphere. The plot bears the hallmarks of horror without descending into cliché: there’s no ambiguity about whether something supernatural is happening or someone is just tilting wildly down the path to madness, and the locals from the nearby village, rather than treating Ellen with hostility as an outsider, are instead friendly and talk freely about local history, ultimately helping Ellen come to terms with the truth of Catherine’s and Elver House’s story. That moment of clarity also could easily have been nothing more than a well-worn trope, but here it’s imbued with meaning and prompts Ellen to empathetic reflection. Anyone who has cared for an aging parent will find a poignant familiarity in Ellen’s attempts to navigate Catherine’s seeming cognitive decline, her uncertainty about how much help she can or should offer a grown person (and a client) with a sometimes tenuous hold on the moment. It’s a rainy-weekend-snuggled-indoors haunted house read that’s inhabited by the ghosts of untapped potential and moribund dreams.

Thank you NetGalley and Salt Publishing for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

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.

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

Slow burning rural mystery
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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

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.