The Retreat is another hit by an author I have come to rely upon for clever and complex psychological thrillers. The setting is very atmospheric, the plot engaging and the characters multi-dimensional. Recommended!

Mark Edwards is a fantastic writer and he has done it again with standalone The Retreat. A retreat for writers to come to relax and let their creative juices flow... although relaxing at this particular retreat is the last thing on the agenda!
Secrets, gossip, superstition and intrigue will keep you hooked throughout.
Thanks to Amazon Publishing for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Lucas Is an author who decides that a writers retreat in the town where he was born would help him to complete his new novel. Whilst there, he falls for the owner of the house Julia, who has lost her husband to drowning and her daughter Lily on the same day. There is no real evidence though that Lily is in fact dead and Lucas goes about trying to investigate the circumstances surrounding what happened on that fateful day. Apart from the very odd happenings in the Retreat house, there is a lot of folklore in the village and some people believe that the local witch called "the Widow" took Lily and a previous girl who had gone missing from the village.

i struggled witj the first few pages of the book......but towards the middle I was gripped and really wanted to know what had happened to Lily. The story goes between the current time and every so often goes back to Lily's story.. Of the two main characters, I got to like Lucas, I never really warmed to Julia and didn't get a sense of her real personality as such. Having said that the twists and turns just kept coming kerping you on your toes turning the pages! Stayed up for hours to finish and was really disappointed when it ended!

Would highly recommend this - a great read. Look forward to reading more by Mark Edwards. Thanks so much to the author, NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review.

3.5*
This is one of those books that either works for you and you’ll absolutely love it, or it’s going to leave you scratching your head. Well from my rating you can see where I landed.

A writers retreat. Time to get away from the crazy city and all the pressures bearing down on you. An opportunity to concentrate on your work in progress, perhaps even wrapping it all up before that looming deadline.
But when Lucas finally arrives at the retreat, he’s greeted with anything but the Zen peacefulness he was hoping for.
His host Julia’s daughter vanished years ago. He’s now on over-drive to find answers for Julia. And…bon voyage to finishing his book!!

There is a level of the supernatural weaved into the plotline of the missing girl – a frightening folklore tale that the village deeply believes and, is in fact, terrified of. This part of the book just didn’t click for me. I just wasn’t able to buy into it completely.

There are some absolutely rave reviews for this book, so please take a look and a chance. It may be the perfect fit for you.
I’m a huge Mark Edwards fan and have four of his other books sitting on my shelf. And even though this one may have fallen just a bit short for me...you know I’ll still be reaching for his next release!

As always, a great Traveling Sister reading experience!

Thank you to NetGalley, Thomas & Mercer /Amazon Publishing and Mark Edwards for an ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! I just finished The Retreat by Mark Edwards and feel like I can finally take a full breath! Dark, atmospheric, creepy, mysterious, chills up the back of your neck - that's what you're in for when you pick up this book.

The story is set in the small town of Beddmawr in North Wales. It's a town full of suspicions, folk lore, ghost stories and secrets.

Julia lost her husband and daughter in a tragic accident 2 years ago not long after moving to Beddmawr. The family was taking a walk near their rural home with Lily in the lead. Her parents stopped to argue and when they came to the river, they spotted one of Lily's favorite stuffed animals that she always kept with her in the water. Her husband drowned trying to save their daughter. His body was found, but Lily's never was. Because of that, Julia holds hope that she is still alive. Needing money, and tired of rattling around the big house by herself, she offers her home as a writer's retreat. It's quiet, rural, near woods and a river, has a little cottage on the grounds, perfect place to get away and concentrate. The house quickly fills with guests.

Eerie things begin happening in the home, and, one-by-one, all of the guests experience them. They are certain someone is entering their rooms at night, they hear singing in the walls, things go missing and show up in unexpected places. Some say they've even seen Lily and a woman in a long red cloak. Unnerved, some of the guests choose to leave. Lucas, a horror writer and one of the first guests, is taken with Julia and wants to help her find peace. Unbeknownst to Julia, he hires a private investigator to see if the police missed anything or if it's possible Lily was taken by someone. He gets more than he bargains for when the investigation begins!

This book is so wonderfully atmospheric. Edwards beautifully paints the scene, the emotions of the characters, and just keeps building and building the suspense. And I never would've guessed the ending, so kudos on that too! Do you remember being scared as a child by ghost stories, Urban myths etc.? You will recapture that same feeling when reading The Retreat.

Excellent read. 4.5 Stars from me!!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for allowing me to read a copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review.

From the beginning this book had my interest. A young girl was down by the water with her mom and dad, only to go missing. Where did the girl girl? She seems to have disappeared, and they cannot find her. Now a few years later, her mom lives alone and opens a writers retreat in her home, - a place for authors to come and enjoy solitude while writing their books.

As I continued reading there were several twists and turns. A few haunting revelations, which were interesting. It had some good points and some dry points which I found difficult to hold my interest, but I continued reading in the hopes that the book would pick up. I was determined to find out just exactly what happened to the little girl.

I continued reading and overall it was a good book. I struggled to get through the book but overall it was an ok read for me.

The Retreat by Mark Edwards is a thriller with mild horror elements in which a young girl, Lily goes missing and little evidence is left to find her. The story is a little clumpy to start off with, the writing seems to be a little laboured but once we get to the action about a third of the way in, it starts to loosen up and a suspenseful atmosphere is created. Julia the mother of the missing child who has lost her husband in the search for Lily, opens her house as a writers retreat where she has four guests stay. Lucas one of the guests, who has also lost a partner, signs up to complete his novel but has difficulty focusing and insists on trying to help Julia, by finding out what happened to Lily. The plot thickens with historic disappearances and the horror story of the red widow spread by children and parents alike, leading to a lengthy, twisty and yet quite satisfying conclusion. Would recommend.

He did it again! Another 5 star read for an author who has quickly stepped into my top five favorites list.

This might sound odd, but I always have fun reading his books. His content might be dark, creepy, and full of death and murder, but its just so entertaining, trying to figure out what is real or just a diversion. Oh-and another fun element is catching all references from his past novels when they pop up. He certainly likes to keep his readers on high alert!

This is the 5th 5 star book I've read by Edwards, and each one I have had the pleasure of reading with my GR buddy Christine. We always start out so confident, thinking we know Edwards so well now that there is no way he will be able to pull the wool over our eyes like he has in the past. Knowing how Edwards likes to throw multiple characters in the mix, we were ready to weed out the throw away ones. Next there is the plot, which once again we were confident in our knowledge that Edwards is going to trip us up with false leads and a bunch of distractions, but this time we'll be able to avoid those traps and stay one step ahead.

So how did we do? We failed miserably...And I couldn't be happier about it!

The Retreat is full of little twists and turns that kept us both thinking outside the box. We changed our minds on the bad guy a few times, got all tangled up wondering what was real versus urban legend, and most importantly we never saw that last twist coming! Brilliant!

I can't wait to see where Edwards takes us next time. Because next time there is NO WAY he's going to fool us again. ;)

ARC provided by NetGalley

*A copy of this e-book was sent to me in exchange for my honest review.
A horror author decides to escape to a writer's retreat to work on his latest novel, but ends up getting sucked in to the mystery of what happened there years ago. The Retreat is everything I was looking for in a suspense/mystery/thriller, and kept me guessing until the very end.
This book basically defines my reading wheelhouse. Creepy woods? Check. Struggling author seeking inspiration? Check. Weird cold-case crime to obsess over and solve? Check and check.

This mystery was the perfect combination of surprise and sufficient clues to give you a chance at solving the crime for yourself. I really enjoyed the multi-generational element to the story, and I thought the ending was quite clever.

I have been in a such a thriller-mystery mood lately but was getting a little tired of the genre tropes. This story was so refreshing!
My rating: 4/5 stars.

Lucas is a novelist. One of his books actually hit the bestseller list, but now he's struggling to write his next story. An advance has already been paid to him, but he can't seem to find his muse. Knowing he needs to get with it and present a finished manuscript to his agent, he travels to a writer's retreat in Wales where he lived as a child. He believes some peace, quiet and seclusion will help him put words on the page. He discovers that the widow who runs the retreat, Julia, lost a child and her husband in a freak accident three years ago. Julia is convinced her daughter didn't drown in the river like her husband because they never found the body. The longer Lucas stays at the retreat, the more strange things start happening...and the stronger his sense of dread becomes. Lily is not the first child to go missing. And perhaps local folklore and rumors have more truth to them than he would like to believe.

I loved this story! It's spooky and suspenseful vibe definitely kept my attention from beginning to end. The suspense builds slowly, weaving through the tale like morning fog through a forest. Every time I thought I knew what was going on, more details would be revealed making me doubt my theory. Great story!

I listened to the audio book version of this novel. Narrated by Simon Mattacks, the audio is just shy of 9 1/2 hours long. Mattacks reads at a steady pace with good inflection. I have hearing loss but was easily able to hear and understand the entire book.

Mark Edwards is the author of several thrillers including Follow You Home and Magpies. The Retreat is the first book by Edwards that I have read. I enjoyed it so much that I will definitely be reading more of his writing!

**I voluntarily read an advance reader copy of this book from Thomas & Mercer via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

EXCERPT: It was a stone house, painted white, with a steep tiled roof. It was bigger and more imposing than I'd expected. The kind of place that looked like it would always be cold inside, no matter how many fires you lit. Behind the house, a steep bank half protected it from the elements. To either side, woodland stretched as far as I could see.

Something flapped in the branches above my head, startling me and almost making me lose my balance. But I stole another look at the house before I climbed down, and smiled. It was the perfect place to write a scary book.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: A missing child. A desperate mother. And a house full of secrets.

Two years ago, Julia lost her family in a tragic accident. Her husband drowned trying to save their daughter, Lily, in the river near their rural home. But the little girl’s body was never found—and Julia believes Lily is somehow still alive.

Alone and broke, Julia opens her house as a writers’ retreat. One of the first guests is Lucas, a horror novelist, who becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Lily. But within days of his arrival, the peace of the retreat is shattered by a series of eerie events.

When Lucas’s investigation leads him and Julia into the woods, they discover a dark secret—a secret that someone will do anything to protect…

What really happened that day by the river? Why was Lily never found? And who, or what, is haunting the retreat?

From the bestselling author of Follow You Home and The Magpies comes his most terrifying novel yet.

MY THOUGHTS: I read The Retreat overnight, in one sitting, because I simply could not bear to put it down. Yes, it's that good. I defy anyone to read this without pulling the curtains a little tighter, without starting at every little noise. And if you have a child, I guarantee you'll be keeping her a little closer to home, that's if you let her out of your sight at all.

Mark Edwards has hit the ball right out of the park with his latest offering, The Retreat. I have always enjoyed his books, rated them highly, but The Retreat is something special. Nail-bitingly special. Breathtakingly special. OMG! I never saw THAT coming special.

So, I might be a bit of a sucker for a book that features a creepy old house, but that on its own is no guarantee of success with me. Edwards has this knack of being able to take a pretty ordinary situation and infuse it with enough suspense, enough emotion, enough atmosphere to hook me and keep me there right to the end.

Atmospheric. Sinister. Chilling. These are all words that can be applied to The Retreat. And let's not forget unpredictable. Every time I came up with a theory for what happened, was happening, or what was about to happen, Edwards shot me down in flames.

Am I recommending The Retreat? Definitely. With the full five blindingly bright stars of praise.

Thank you to Thomas and Mercer via Netgalley for providing a digital copy of The Retreat by Mark Edwards for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

Please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the 'about' page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com for an explanation of my rating system.

This review and others are also published on my blog sandysbookaday.wordpress.com https://sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/...

One word to describe The Retreat? Atmospheric!! Lucas is a novelist who has written a successful horror and is struggling to follow it up. He goes to a writers retreat to get some work done, run by Julia. Lucas has lost his girlfriend in an accident and is still grieving and he discovers that Julias' husband has drowned and her daughter has gone missing. He becomes very interested in the story as his friendship with Julia develops and decides to help her get closure. Add in some old ghost stories, some creepy villagers, some other writers who hear and see strange things and most importantly some dark scary woods and it makes for a thrilling adventure.
All through the story I veered between scepticism and what ifs? Is there really a presence in the house or is it just over imagination? Is Lily dead or has she been taken by someone or even the Red Widow as some people seem to believe? It is a book that you will not put down until you find out!!
Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and author for giving me an ARC in exchange for am honest review

A writers retreat....what could be more perfect?
As Lucas struggles with his next book he decides that this retreat could be just what he needs....calming, quiet countryside in Wales. ..
What Lucas hadn't reckoned on was the body count that would rise when he got there...
A twisty psychological thriller with folklore and a sense of the mythic about it, lots of interesting characters that help this story to build to an unbelievable crescendo. ...I couldn't put it down

A missing child, a desperate mother, a house with a dark history, a village with horrifying secret and a horror author.
An interesting combination of elements to make this story rather compelling.

I loved the setting, this writer’s retreat with many interesting characters and the village with a very fascinating mix. The spooky forest and all the creepy incidents only made the story more compelling. Lucas, the horror author, couldn’t help but feel intrigued by the stories of missing children of this village, mixed with the many myths and folks stories.
I really enjoyed it, and it was quite fascinating how people can be very sensitive to these stories and superstitions in a way to dictate their lives.

The truth behind it all kind of took me by surprise, at least part of it I completely didn’t expect. For a while, I felt it was all very neatly wrapped, as perfect an ending as could be for such a story. But then came the epilogue and it was not that simple anymore, there is always more to the stories.

A horror story writer visits a writer’s retreat in a small town in England. The retreat is run by a beautiful woman with a tragic past. Two years ago, her eight-year-old daughter went missing and her husband drowned. Not long after his arrival, Lucas realizes that the retreat is not as peaceful as he thought it would be and someone doesn’t want him to find out the truth behind what happened to Lily.
I am not a fan of the horror genre, so I did have a few doubts at the beginning if I signed up for the wrong read. While this book made me lose a night’s sleep (I was sure that if I closed my eyes, I was going to wake up to someone or something standing over me), this was one book I’m glad I didn’t miss. Thrilling and intense. Watch out for the epilogue.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

I had never read a Mark Edwards novel before, and now I am a huge fan! Creepy, dark, twisted, and chilling; everything I love in a novel.

The beginning was extremely slow. At times, I wondered if I would get through the entire book. I am glad I did!

I could have done without certain aspects of the novel, such as the romance between Julia and Lucas. This part of the plot felt like fluff, a filler. There were also times when I wanted the novel to skip parts as they seemed completely unrelated to the main theme of the novel. The main theme is so gripping that every time I was taken away from it I was angry. I just wanted to know what happened to Lily.

The novel was filled with just the right amount of guilt and denial on Julia's part. Without this, she would have seemed too distant or too resolved, but she was portrayed perfectly.

At times the number of characters is a lot to handle. Keeping them straight was a challenge, and some of them took away from the novel.

Thank you to Thomas & Mercer, the author, Mark Edwards, and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review

Nothing makes me happier than discovering that Mark Edwards has a new book out. I have been a super fan ever since I first read Follow You Home. Just like that novel, The Retreat is a novel that you want to read with all the lights on. Like another of my favorites, Stephen King, Edwards is a master of scary. However, unlike King, his scares are rooted in realism and not the supernatural. Edwards has a rare ability of plunging the reader into the heart of the action through his words and the atmosphere he develops. He is a master of the psychological thriller.

The Retreat tells the story through the eyes of Lucas Radcliffe, a horror novelist with writers' block who books himself into a writers' retreat in Beddmarr, Wales. Lucas is a recent widower who was born in Beddmarr but hasn't been back since he was a child. The writers' retreat is run by a woman named Julia, who is also trying to restart her own life. Two years prior, Julia lost both her husband and her daughter, Lily, to a drowning accident. Lily's body was never found, and Julia has never accepted her death. Immediately after checking into the retreat, Lucas and fellow writers also staying at Julia's are consumed by a series of strange events happening in the area. Add in a creepy local urban legend and stories of hauntings, and we're off and running. As with any great psychological thriller, the reader is pretty much in the dark until the final chapters.

I love Edwards writing style, and he is a terrific wordsmith. One of my favorite analogies was a description of a married couple arguing "snip snip, like two pairs of scissors having a fight." His writing is superb. His character development is fantastic. And his craftsmanship in capturing a reader's imagination and taking him/her on a novelistic journey is brilliant.

Thank you NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for providing me with an advance copy of The Retreat. I will be recommending it to everyone!

This haunting novel from Mark Edwards is full of spooky tales, sad stories and a dark and creepy location.... it's everything I love.

Julia is alone now. Her husband died a tragic death and her daughter has been missing for the last two years. She has recently converted her historic home into a writer's retreat. Enter: Lucas, a horror writer, with a tragic past as well.

Lucas become interested in Julia's story. Perhaps it's his writer's block but he start to dig around and after finding out about the history of Julia's disappearance and The Widow, he is drawn into the folklore of the town, all while trying to help find Lily.

The last half of the novel is fast moving and full of twists. There's a sense of terror that I had while reading....I HAD to find out what happened, I NEEDED a resolution.

Mark Edwards knows how to write a book that you can't put down.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and Mark Edwards for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Just the right amount of creepy, this would be an amazing story to curl up and immerse yourself into, a perfect one-sitting read. It is dark and atmospheric, chilling and absorbing. It gets a bit wild and hard to believe at times, but it's so well-crafted that I didn't mind. Mark Edwards has mentioned that he drew inspiration from his little girl returning from school and sharing that her classmates were talking about the old "Bloody Mary" tale. Most of us heard variations of that story when we were young, and this book reminds us of that slightly excited, nervous, and just a little afraid feeling we had.

Julia lost her whole family in one day. Her husband drowned as he tried to save their daughter Lily, while Julia could only watch helplessly from the shore because she cannot swim. While his body was recovered, they never found her daughter... and she believes she's still out there somewhere, alive and waiting to be found. Perhaps she was taken by a stranger, swallowed into the woods before her parents could notice and they just assumed she'd fallen into the water. With no proof either way, she seems doomed to never know.

Two years later, she has opened her home to writers who seek a peaceful retreat to work on their craft. One of them is Lucas, who is here for inspiration. His previous work was a horror novel, and it was very successful. Now he's experiencing a bit of writer's block. He's unaware of Julia's past, and she's clearly unaware of his, as his first book dealt with missing children. Lucas immediately feels a sort of connection with Julia when he finds out about her tragic past, as he's experienced devastating loss of his own. He quickly becomes a bit obsessed with finding answers for her. If Lily didn't drown, where is she? Could she still be alive? Or is she still in the river? As the writers at the retreat get to know each other, some strange things begin to happen around the house and in the woods... is he getting too close to the truth?

I received a copy of this book from Net Galley and Thomas & Mercer, thank you! My review is honest and unbiased.

What’s not to love about a story set in a writers’ retreat in Wales? Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? Except in Mark Edwards’ story, The Retreat, something’s not quite right. What are the strange sounds the guests hear? Figments of their imaginations, or something more sinister? And there’s something eerie and mysterious about the woods that surround it as well.

I was very quickly caught up in this story which slowly revealed itself to be a clever blend of mystery, folklore and thriller. Horror writer Lucas comes to stay at the retreat to rediscover his voice and inspiration. The beautiful owner, Julia, has recently suffered a double tragedy – her daughter went missing, presumed drowned, and her husband drowned in the river trying to save her.

Even though the pace, especially during the first half, is mostly gentle, this book is seriously gripping. I loved the effortless use of the English language. There was a touch of everything in this multi-layered tale: superstition, folklore and legend; grief; romance; murder; and an intriguing back story about a tragedy that happened many years before. The story gets more and more chilling as it unfolds – and this has to be the best epilogue I’ve read for a long time! I was nowhere near guessing the outcome, and most of what happened took me completely by surprise.