Title: The Dead HouseAuthor: Billy O'Callaghan
Genre: Paranormal, Horror, Thriller
Publisher: Arcade/Skyhorse Publishing
Source: ARC - NetGalley
Purchase: Amazon, Book Depository
Book Description:
Sometimes the past endures—and sometimes it never lets go.
This best-selling debut by an award-winning writer is both an eerie contemporary ghost story and a dread-inducing psychological thriller. Maggie is a successful young artist who has had bad luck with men. Her last put her in the hospital and, after she’s healed physically, left her needing
to get out of London to heal mentally and find a place of quiet that will restore her creative spirit. On the rugged west coast of Ireland, perched on a wild cliff side, she spies the shell of a cottage that dates back to Great Famine and decides to buy it. When work on the house is done, she invites her dealer to come for the weekend to celebrate along with a couple of women friends, one of whom will become his wife. On the boozy last night, the other friend pulls out an Ouija board. What sinister thing they summon, once invited, will never go.
Ireland is a country haunted by its past. In Billy O'Callaghan's hands, its terrible beauty becomes a force of inescapable horror that reaches far back in time, before the Famine, before Christianity, to a pagan place where nature and superstition are bound in an endless knot.
My Opinion:
Loved this BOOK! LOVED IT!
Ok, why you may ask? It had me captivated the whole way through, just when I thought I would put it down...I couldn't! I just couldn't.
I wanted to know what Michael thought about what was happening to his best friend Maggie. After she basically gets attacked by her boyfriend, Maggie starts to act differently and after Michael and a bunch of friends conjure up a ghost/spirit, things get worse. I immediately fell in love with how the story was written and executed. Concise, exciting, creepy and hauntingly written. I loved it from the first page till the last.
I really enjoyed how the author did not dwell on the love story in the book and how he detailed the scenery. I could totally picture myself on the beach with Michael and almost felt myself choking, fighting not to be drowned in the water with him. I really enjoyed this book and if you are a horror/thriller/ghost story lover you will totally enjoy this. I highly recommend this book. There was only one part that was a little bit graphic, when we find out what the Master did, so it was not ultra gorey or graphic it was more creepy than anything else.
I give the book 5 of 5 stars!
About the Author:
Billy O'Callaghan was born in Cork in 1974, and is the author of three short story collections: 'In Exile' and 'In Too Deep' (2008 and 2009 respectively, both published by Mercier Press), and 'The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind' (2013, published by New Island Books), which was honoured with a Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award and which has been selected as Cork's 'One City, One Book' for 2017.His first novel, 'The Dead House', was published by Brandon Books, an imprint of O'Brien Press, in May 2017, and is due for publication in the U.S. by Arcade, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, in April 2018.
Almost a hundred of his stories have appeared in literary journals and magazines around the world, including: Absinthe: New European Writing, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, the Bellevue Literary Review, Bliza (Poland), the Chattahoochee Review, Confrontation, the Emerson Review, the Fiddlehead, Hayden's Ferry Review, the Kenyon Review, the Kyoto Journal, the London Magazine, the Los Angeles Review, Narrative, Salamander, the Saturday Evening Post, the Southeast Review, Southword, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Versal, and Yuan Yang: a Journal of Hong Kong and International Writing. New work is forthcoming as a Ploughshares Solo.
A recipient of the 2013 Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award for Short Story of the Year, and a 2010 Arts Council of Ireland Bursary Award for Literature, his story, 'The Boatman' was recently shortlisted for the 2016 Costa Short Story Award. He has won and been shortlisted for numerous other honours, including the George A. Birmingham Award, the Lunch Hour Stories Prize, the Molly Keane Creative Writing Award, the Sean O'Faolain Award, the RTE Radio 1 Francis MacManus Award, the Faulkner/Wisdom Award, the Glimmer Train Prize and the Writing Spirit Award. He was also short-listed four times for the RTE Radio 1 P.J. O'Connor Award for Drama.
He also served as the 2016 Writer-in-Residence for the Cork County Libraries.
Connect with the Author
Disclaimer: I received this ARC from Netgalley for an honest review. No one sponsored or endorsed this post. All opinions are my own. All information on the book or author can be found at the authors website. Thank you to Netgalley & Arcade/Skyhorse Publishing for giving me a chance to read this novel.
Happy Reading!
I love a good spooky thriller. The title and cover is creepy and sets the right tone.
ReplyDeleteYes, it does its about the house on the hill. It was a beautifully written book and I hope you get a chance to read it!
DeleteI like thrillers.
ReplyDeleteMe too! I hope you get a chance to read this one!
DeleteOoooo! This sounds good! I love stories about ghosts/hauntings and I love psychological thrillers. I am absolutely checking this book out!! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteGood, it really is very good. I hope you enjoy it!
DeleteI love reading books like this. I can't wait to get this book
ReplyDeleteI hope you do get a chance! It was an amazing book.
DeleteI, too, would love to read this! Thanks for sharing your review.
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome. I hope you get a chance to read this. It was really good!
DeleteThis is my kind of book. I love thrillers.
ReplyDeleteYes, I love horror/thriller books. They are always at the top of my list! Hope you get a chance to read this one!
DeleteThis sounds like a great book. I am going to have to look for it on my libraries overdrive.
ReplyDeleteSounds scary, houses can die?
ReplyDelete