The Carrow Haunt

Creepy heebie jeebies galore!!! You all should know by now I’m a dedicated Darcy girl!!! Paranormal investigation in a house with an extremely dark history?! Sign me up!!! 🙌 I was hooked from the start, not wanting to put the book down!!! And then things got….weird… 👀 I won’t say more because it will give too much away, but I still encourage you to check this one out for the creepy vibes alone!! 👏

It would seem that Darcy Coates and I share a mutual love of happy endings, even against all odds. After reading Craven Manor, I was very much looking forward to this! Significantly spookier and truly a tale of horrors, The Carrow Haunt did succeed in raising my hairs and prickling my flesh as I read it in my bed all night. It’s currently 5AM. Whoops!

I admit that my ratings are usually based purely on feelings, rather than actual criticisms of elements of the book and story itself. Therefore I ended up changing my review from 4 to 5 stars, because it was a solid joyride. Not only did I binge read it, and not only did it scare me, I feel in my heart that it was a better-executed story than my beloved Craven Manor, with the exception of the epilogue which felt disappointingly rushed. Really nothing could have topped the relief and happiness felt in the final chapter before the epilogue. I do delight in some shipping, however.

As for the story itself, high points included some excellent exposition and spooky imagery that succeeded in truly scaring me. Low points included some obnoxious characters and their persistent denial of the supernatural phenomena spoiling parts of the story for me. I hate it when things are so obvious to the reader but not to the characters within the book. Even the supposed paranormal expert of the group was infuriatingly oblivious most of the time. This is either a high point or a low point depending on your personal preference, but there were an unusually large number of twists and red herrings that actually made the true conflict of the story very difficult to suss out. By the third twist you might grow tired, but I applaud it, because I wasn’t sure what to believe until the true antagonist finally caught up to Remy and did that thing I dislike – villainous monologue explaining the evil plan in full detail, lol.

Despite some occasional tropey-ness, I thought the story managed to stand out as unique and clever, and it was creepy enough to make me be sure that my toes were always covered by the blankets. I had a very good experience reading this book.

So I finally picked up a Darcy Coates book and I have to say I was not disappointed. It was what I wanted in a spooky haunted house story. The beginning started a little slow but once the story started going, it just kept going. A group stays in a haunted house to explore its history and the ghosts there and before long all hell breaks loose, shit hits the fan, and people start dying...

The story was greatly detailed and I was able to picture the house and the ghosts perfectly in my mind’s eye, which allowed me to be a little more invested in the story. Each character was interestingly developed, Remy was a fantastic main character the other characters balanced each other out and created enough diversity to create some conflict between each other. The atmosphere of the story was brilliant. I was completely sucked into the book and finished it in a day.

I want to clarify that this book just doesn’t jump right into the suspense, Coates does a nice job of building up the suspense but it isn’t towards the halfway mark that things really start getting interesting and starts breaking loose. So if you’re a fan of a slow-burn suspense story, this is perfect. It was a fun read and I enjoyed the history telling of the back story of Carrow House.

Enjoyed very much

This book will leave you guessing until the very end!!