Imagine two young children left to the care of their estranged grandparents as their mother recovers in intensive care. Now imagine the grandparents – caring, nurturing and very friendly – harbouring a deadly secret.

I had this in audiobook format and while listening, I couldn’t help think of a horror movie I saw a few years back called The Visit. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you also watch it as it feels like a tie-in.

The protagonists are Tara and Kyle, two very young and shy children. The book begins with their arrival at the Folcroft house and the meeting of their grandparents.

It’s their first time meeting May and Peter Folcroft. The elderly couple seem friendly at first, and the house, hidden in the base of the mountains, is full of nooks to explore.

But strange things keep happening. The swing moves on its own. Peter paces around the house late at night and seems obsessed with the lake where his sister drowned. Doors slam and curtains shift when no one is inside. And one room is kept permanently locked.

When a storm cuts the phone line – their only contact with the outside world – Tara and Kyle must find a way to protect themselves from their increasingly erratic grandparents… and from the ghosts that inhabit the Folcrofts’ house.

The children are starting to suspect the grandparents and try to recover their mobile phones which they so naively have turned in when they arrived being told there’s no signal in the area. And no internet. And the only connection to the outside world is a trip into town every now and then to get groceries.

But the ghosts get closer and their mother’s diary only indicates that something else might have been wrong and why contact was cut early on.

I won’t spoil it too much but the gist is that the grandparents are not really their grandparents nor did they ever have a daughter. They stole the child of a family who was looking for refuge and killed the parents in a sealed chamber – by letting them asphyxiate. Then they kinda wanted to keep their grand kids with them – dead or alive.