The Haunting of Truscott House (Shadows in the Past #1)
Author: Mo Raven
4.5 out of 5 stars
After her parents deaths, Chloe decides to finish the project they were working on, the restoration of their family home, Truscott House. Despite her grandmother insisting she shouldn’t, Chloe moves into the house and starts cleaning and painting with her friend and roommate Emily. But Chloe doesn’t know the family history her grandmother has kept from everyone about the murders that happened there, and she doesn’t know that the killer’s ghost is still there.
Overall, I enjoyed this story. It has a decent spooky atmosphere, and the paranormal activity has a good build up. The reader does know within the first chapter who the ghost is and what happened. The focus of the story is more about Chloe and her family, grief and forgiveness.
Chloe is stubborn and determined not to give up the house. She also tries to deny that anything unusual is happening. Chloe and Emily are close friends. I appreciated the moment when Emily pointed out that Chloe’s repeated denials are as illogical as she says Emily is being. I often think the same thing when watching paranormal shows where someone continues to say there’s a rational explanation even when there obviously isn’t one.
There were a couple of nitpicky things that bugged me. The first is that there’s stained tiles in the kitchen where the murders took place, which I thought was really weird because the house had been rented out before. And even without renting it out, wouldn’t the flooring have been covered up or replaced? This could have easily been fixed just by mentioning that Chloe’s parents had been in the process of replacing the flooring. Another thing was that some of the word choices were odd. The best example is when at one point the ghost is described as being “seriously annoyed”, which in the context of the chapter made me laugh. They could have just written very annoyed instead.
The negatives I mentioned didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book, which is why I’m rating it 4.5 out of 5 stars. There isn’t any mystery for the reader since we know from the first chapter who the ghost is. However, it’s less than 100 pages, so this is a good one if you’re just looking for a quick and spooky read.
Current price through Amazon Kindle: $2.99
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074YHGRHL
(I do not benefit from the use of this link.)