WOW, well, this was a wild ride. My head is still spinning. Alex Lane, a down-on-his-luck, but slightly charming undergraduate, takes a job cleaning out an old gothic hospital over the summer. It’s the 90s: he meets a bunch of other student misfits, they doss about a bit, the group encounter strange goings-on, and things take a turn for the promisingly creepy. But what starts out as a novel focused on building slow tension turns about 70% of the way through into an uproarious crescendo. We rapidly encounter the occult musings of an isolated poet, a series of dark rituals, and a descent into interdimensional travel. Everyone loses their grip on reality (including me as the reader). Maybe it’s the magic mushrooms? I loved this literary horror from Will Maclean, and I’ll definitely be coming back for more. Many thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for sending me an advanced review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Summer, 1993, and university student Alex Lane finds himself at the end of the summer term, broke and without plans. When offered the chance to join students – including beautiful, mercurial Ella – clearing out Solace House, a Victorian residence left by reclusive hoarder Edwin Flayne, he accepts. Initially the house seems ordinary, if slightly mad. But sorting through junk, they discover Flayne’s journals detailing his obsession with his missing mother, his discovery of strange place Bewise, and his belief in another parallel realm, with coded instructions for reaching it. One of the students becomes increasingly obsessed with the house’s secrets and gaining forbidden knowledge – assuming they’re willing to sacrifice everything and everyone . I have a new obsession. I can hardly find the words to describe my attachment to this story and how I have not stopped thinking about it since I started it. It is the slowest of burns, the build up to the introduction of Solace House is hidden behind meeting Alex and his introduction to the other characters he eventually meets at the Marshlands, and it is from here that the characters and readers meet the House. The writing is stunning, the atmosphere is all-encompassing, the story is abstract, suffocating and addictive in equal measure. Readers will need to be patience and suspend disbelief as the story evolves and realities are twisted. Maclean does an incredible job of blending the real world and the growing madness, time and physical location lose meaning, and as secrets are revealed, the pace speeds up with the descent becoming steeper. The ending felt like a gut punch both emotionally and physically, but I cannot tell you how I feel it ended because I am not sure it did. I don’t doubt this book will divide people, but I am obsessed with the unsettled feeling it has left me with. What I would give to read those journals and tread the floors of that House. One of the easiest five stars I have ever given, and I will be reading it again once I have my physical copy. Thank you to Netgalley, Atlantic Books and Grove for the chance to read an advance copy