Goodreads Choice Award in 2018!

I had this as an audiobook entertaining me on my lovely trips to work and back and I must say that for half the length of the book, I thought Bran was a vampire. Odd, musty manor? Check. Mysterious character that only comes out after dark? Check. Ghostly, white appearances that haunt the lands and knock on windows waiting to be let in? Check. Swirls of darkness and fast moving shapes? Check. When it was revealed that Bran was not, in fact, a vampire, I was really disappointed. Just a cursed line of ancestors with Norse shapeshifters thrown in. That’s why I took a star off.

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Daniel is desperate for a job. When someone slides a note under his door offering him the groundskeeper’s position at an old estate, it seems too good to be true.

Alarm bells start ringing when he arrives at Craven Manor. The mansion’s front door hangs open, and leaves and cobwebs coat the marble foyer. It’s clear no one has lived there in a long time.

But an envelope waits for him inside the doorway. It holds money, and promises more.

Daniel is desperate. Against his better judgement, he moves into the groundskeeper’s cottage behind the crypt. He’s determined to ignore the strange occurrences that plague the estate.

But when a candle flickers to life in the abandoned tower window, Daniel realises Craven Manor is hiding a terrible secret… one that threatens to bury him with it.

What I found most interesting about the book was the premise of the novel. Bran had this massive manor that was falling into disrepair, was old and falling apart and only recently he started looking for a groundskeeper when he found Daniel. Apparently the only reason he sought him out was because he shared some of his food when he was homeless with a stray dog (which was in fact Bran in dog form). But why did he not look for a groundskeeper sooner in his 200 years on Earth?

And then he chooses to pay the delivery guy and Daniel in gold coins. Like that’s not going to raise any questions with regards to origin. And the coins have the map of the place stamped on the back and are quite unique.

And Daniel (and I suppose the delivery guy), somehow manage to find a gold broker that will buy them off them no questions asked as he had “an interested collector”. Who was buying the coins?

Considering that the coins were marked with the coat of arms of the family and were quite specific, someone would have been interested enough in them to doll out money on very niche gold coins.

Why not bank transfers? Why not fortune in stocks and shares? Eventually those gold coins are going to run out and there’s no way for the estate to generate money.

Everyone knows (especially those who have always lived in a castle or manor) that old houses fall apart and they get costly trying to keep.

Well, back to the book.

No strangers are allowed onto the property.
Do not enter the tower.
Do not leave the groundskeeper’s cottage between midnight and dawn. Draw your curtains.
Keep the door locked. If you hear knocking, do not answer it.

Daniel has a job in this mansion and a set of instructions, yet he starts breaking them by either coming home after dark or more maliciously, going specifically where he’s not been meant to go and opening a door he was explicitly told to keep close and guard with salt trails.

He also blabs his mouth in town, brandishing his new found wealth (the gold coins he receives as a salary) and of course he attracts the curiosity and greed of people (especially his cousin).

I can put it down to stupidity but in this time and age, he should have done his own research and not rely on people telling him what they know and have read from different sources.

And he could have, at least, ask Bran of the basis of the online accusations against him. A lot of the drama is preventable by gentle talks. But hey, then we couldn’t have had a climax to the book, a somewhat satisfying ending and a death. The cousin didn’t make it.

Good Points:

• Spooky environment
• Mysterious characters
• Good amount of gore and blood and gouging going on
• One dead
• Loads of cat petting and cat references (thank you! I love cats)
• Some funny sequences: “It will be fine. Go and season the door, just like regular people do all the time.”
• Good depiction of the struggles Daniel went through that in the end got him to accept a questionable job at a very horror-movie location. He had a run-in with homelessness and he couldn’t do it again.
• “And worst of all, people ignored him. Being homeless made him invisible. People would walk past, wearing thick coats and carrying hot takeaway coffees or eating burgers. Their eyes would pass over him as though he were an unattractive part of the scenery. No one said hello or even made eye contact. And that sense of non-existence had left him with a permanent fear of being forgotten by the world.”

Bad Points:

• Main character makes stupid choices (every horror movie has this)
• It’s not vampires
• Very little and convenient shape shifting
• The storyline of the little ghost kid went Casper threw me off. There was some hints that it could be a demented ghost at the start with the climbing on the house, knocking on the windows but hey – it’s only a 12-year old girl playing.