#BookReview ‘The Evil Within’ by S.M Hardy

About the book…

On the brink of a breakdown, two years after the death of his fiance, Jim Hawkes quits his high-powered job in the City to rent a cottage in the Devonshire countryside seeking some well-needed rest.

But Slyford St James is far from the peaceful haven Jim was hoping for.

Almost immediately he is plagued by strange occurrences: a combination lock that won’t open, loud noises in the attic, the figure of a little girl always just out of sight.

His new village friends, Jed and Emma, are convinced Jim has found his way to the village for a reason, to solve the mystery surrounding the suspicious death of a child. But as Jim is haunted by the ghosts of his past and endangered by a real-world threat in the present, it soon becomes apparent that true evil never dies.

My thanks to Lesley at Allison And Busby for the blogtour invite and my gifted review copy of ‘The Evil Within’ which was published in hardcover on March 19th-it’s available wherever good books are sold!

This supernatural thrilller keeps you on edge from page 1-Jim has the kind of meeting that we have all been in, the one where you dream of just saying ‘I can’t do this anymore’ and walking out, except he does it. He has had enough, after two years of carefully balancing his sanity following the mysterious death of his fiance.

He rents a cottage in the village of Slyford St James, hoping the quiet surroundings of country life will be a million miles away from the stresses of London . But you never really leave the horrors of the past behind you…

Enter the strange sight of a girl running through the bottom of his garden, a girl who cannot be there. Bumps and noises in the attic escalate into an attempt on Jim’s life, is he being haunted or is a very corporeal presence trying to get him out of the cottage?

How much you find this novel scary and chill inducing depends on how much you believe in life after death-the secondary characters, Jed and Emma who are both locals , and psychics, are convinced that the village has somehow drawn Jim to it. And that he has a higher purpose, namely that of trying to solve the impossible death of the child that Jim has seen since moving in…

The suspense and characterisation are great, you totally get the sense of the village and the house, the grounds and surrounding buildings are described so well that you feel you are walking on these steets. The story teases you with details about Jim’s fiance, the sudden moving away of the couple who owned the cottage and you are kept on tenterhooks waiting for the big reveals. The story is intriguing and gave me chills, it is a really good piece of escapist fiction which I enjoyed a lot!

About the author…

S. M. Hardy grew up in south London and worked in banking for many years before turning her attention to arboricultural management. She has now given up the day job to allegedly spend more time with her husband; he, however, has noticed that an awful lot more writing appears to be going on. She currently lives in Devon. The Evil Within is her first paranormal mystery novel.

Twitter @SueTingey @AllisonAndBusby

Links-https://www.smhardy.co.uk/