#Spooktober #BlogTour ‘The Hiding Place’ by Amanda Mason

About the book….

Nell Galilee, her husband and twelve year old step-daughter Maude rent a holiday cottage by the sea, needing time and space away from home after Maude became involved in some troubling events. Nell grew up in this small, wind-blown town and has mixed feelings about returning, and it isn’t long before she is recognised by a neighbour, seemingly desperate to befriend her. The cottage too has been empty for some time, and from the start Nell feels uncomfortable there. Something isn’t quite right about this place . . .

Maude, furious about being brought here against her will and her father’s attention falling so often elsewhere, soon finds herself beguiled by the house’s strange atmosphere. There are peculiar marks in the roof beams above her bedroom, and in another room, a hiding place, concealing a strange, unnerving object.
As the house gradually reveals its secrets, Nell becomes increasingly uneasy – and Maude spellbound. But these women – and the women that surround them – are harbouring their own secrets too, and soon events will come to a terrible head . . .

A brilliant, unsettling and chilling novel of mothers and daughters, truth and deception and the lengths people will go to, to obtain power over their own lives, ‘The Hiding Place’ is the second chilling novel from the acclaimed author of ‘The Wayward Girls’.

My thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the blog tour invite , and publishers Zaffre for my gifted review copy of The Hiding Place which is out now in hardback and e-book editions.

Elder House is the uppermost property of a collection of homes known as Bishops Yard, a house viewed with suspicion by those who live there all year around, and not exactly adored by holiday maker cum local girl, Nell, husband Chris and step daughter Maude.

It is not explicitly stated for quite a while into the story, but Maude has a ban on any internet connectivity, and her father has disabled all her apps, which makes for a very moody, irritable tween. Already feeling pushed out by her mother’s new baby, Leo, she is massively resentful of returning to Nell’s home town for a family party when she doesn’t know anybody.

Nell and Chris run a gallery and jewellery business and there is an implication of Nell having undergone some event which has necessitated sea air, a reconnecting with family, and a timely escape. Except…there is a strange smell in the house, there are cracks appearing up the walls, and the angles of the rooms seem all slightly off key.

There is a creeping sense of menace as the crack in Nell’s bedroom expands and reveals a hidden space, which contains a child’s shoe. Who did it belong to, and where is the other one?

Why does a woman who insists that she and Nell were childhood friends, keep hanging around Elder House?

Nell has such vague memories of her childhood, and as a reader, your instinct is to feel for her, and hope that these disjointed memories will come back, and at the same time, you cannot help but think that maybe her brain blocked them out for a reason.

As tensions between Nell and Maude escalate, over missing items and sly comments, Chris does not help at all by running back to sort out the gallery, leaving these two without an intermediary.

You cannot help but feel that the title has multiple meanings- that there is a physical, and metaphorical hiding place, for a mystery to be unravelled, first someone has to be brave enough to uncover the truth.

This gothic, twisting thriller reminds me of Shirley Jackson, it has a sinister tone which is exacerbated by the seeming ordinariness of Elder House. And with the increasingly fractious relationship between Nell and Maude, will they be able to retain any of their previous warmth in time to face whatever is hiding in this creepy, cliff face home?

Another absolute winner from Amanda Mason, this is almost indecently unputdownable, you cannot wait to finish the boring things like work…feeding your kids…all those mundane things, whilst you are constantly trying to unravel the way that the narrative draws you in, solve the mystery, and learn this house’s secrets.

About the author…

Amanda Mason was born and brought up in Whitby, North Yorkshire. She studied Theatre at Dartington College of Arts, where she began writing by devising and directing plays.

Her short stories have been published in several anthologies; The Wayward Girls is her first novel.

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Twitter @amandajanemason @ZaffreBooks @Tr4cyF3nt0n