A very haunting tale with lost and sadness slipping in and out of the pages. I was hooked reading it just to what happens next. And left kinda with a what more could happen in the madness .

I’m a little torn on this one - on the one hand, overall, the plot was fairly interesting. On the other, I’m not crazy about the main character (unsure if that’s intentional). I liked the ghosts, and found their stories to be quite interesting. Overall, a solid read, with both high and low points.

A blind man finally sees the ghosts he knew all along lived there. The story is intriguing. Blind Walls is a great read.
Quite enjoyable novel and highly recommend.

This book is written almost stream-of-consciousness. We start off with Raymond Smollet, the blind tour guide, who is fixing to retire after 30 years of service. It’s his last tour, and he has his spiel memorized, leaving him free to imagine what his audience looks like, based solely on what he can see. But, the house has a going-away present for him…and suddenly instead of darkness as he walks through the myriad rooms, he encounters ghosts living vignettes of their former life. Through him the reader discovers some of the main characters who make up the history of the house.

However, his second site is not limited to just what went on in the house itself – it’s able to take him into the very lives of people he’s viewing.

I got so caught up in these characters’ lives, loves, and heartbreaks. Raymond Smollet reminded me of blind Homer telling of the Fall of Troy- only here, blind Raymond is telling of the rise and fall of the house of Weatherlee– and the people associated with it. I loved the insights into the inner workings of obsession, not only on the part of Mrs. Weatherlee, but also on the people she comes in contact with, and how this obsession affects everyone it touches.

Good job and kudos to the authors. I look forward to reading more of their work (and would love to see the play the book was based on!)

I have a lot of mixed feeling about this book. I can't say that I really liked it but I didn't not like it either. It is a strange book. The story line is very slow moving. It is not the typical haunted house and ghost story either. It is a bit confusing at times too. The timeline in the book bounces all over and some things just don't mix. One example is Chuck. Mrs. Weatherlee (the owner of the house) passed away in 1922, Chuck (a newly hired construction worker) meets her on his first day on the job, but yet his time in the house is in the 1970's or 80's, with a paycheck of $600 a week for a construction worker which is not conceivable until into the the 21st century. I personally know many construction worker's who make no where near $600 a week today.

The book is also a kind of adaptation to the real Winchester house. The Weatherlee Mansion is a huge sprawling mansion with many rooms, with stairways and doors that go no where. Mrs. Weatherlee's husband and young daughter passed away and a spiritualist advised her that the only way she would continue living is to continue to build onto the house. Sound familiar?

The main character of the book Raymond Smollet. The story is written with his narration of his life and career as a tour guide through the Weatherlee Mansion. Raymond is also totally blind. This is his last tour before retirement. As he is taking his brood as he calls them through the house he is gifted with second site. As he goes into the rooms he sees images of Mrs. Weatherlee as well as other people like the construction crew and Mrs. Weatherlee's niece/secretary and hears their conversations. All the while going through his tour spiel without missing a beat. Personally I would be speechless and unable to continue the tour.

In my honest opinion while this is not a terrible book, I don't see myself running out and buying copies of this book for my friends and family. It was a hard read and did not hold my attention very well either. I found myself struggling to get through this book honestly.

Seriously great writing skills and such an eye for description. The characterisation is perfect, all characters so unique and distinguishable from each other. This book really has the potential to be a five star, if it wasn't for one issue - the tour guide. Don't get me wrong, he's a great character, but not for this story. The real story was Dee and Chuck. The tour guide genuinely, to me, looked like he was just there as a way to piece the main story together. He had no relevance at all. Every time I'd be getting into the story, he would pop up again, distracting me from what I really wanted to read. And when he did pop up, it wasn't like he should be there, it was more a case of he popped up just so you wouldn't forget about him. Shame, without him I would have given it a 5 star rating.

Blind Walls was such a struggle to finish. I was excited to read this book , but was so disappointed because it was so slow.

Blind Walls is an unusual story narrated by a character names Raymond Smollet. He is a dour, middle-aged creature with a penchant for drinking away his troubles each night and chasing a life of regret as a tour guide for the Weatherlee Mansion. He is legally blind and in his perception this has limited his career options and perhaps his personal ones too?

I struggled to feel close to Raymond, because by the time we meet him in many ways he is more “dead” than the ghosts who arrive to speak to him in his final day at a job that clearly does not fill the gaps in his life.

The historic mansion is a dark and ominous character and is loosely fashioned after the infamous Winchester House in San Jose, California. Sophia

Weatherlee the famous recluse and Weatherlee widow is introduced to the reader via a ghost that emerges to tell the story of the house through the eyes of its owner. A woman in black who still wears the Victorian style mourning attire and comes off as selfish, petulant and emotionally unstable with a fierce need to control everything around her.

A blue-collar man named Chuck emerges who becomes in many ways married to the house that seems to expand and suck everyone into its vortex. Who initially sees his job as the foreman a blessing, a curse, then a defining aspect of who he was and who he has also become.

At the point in the story when the vision of Chuck arrived, I had a tough time trying to decipher who was speaking to and in some ways I was a bit lost in the images which were very strong and powerful as in, Tiffany windows, stairways to nowhere and the endless rooms and galleries.

There was an interesting play on who was alive and who was no longer living as the story of Chuck, Dee and Joey move to the forefront and basically took over the plot as Seymour the tour guide is beset with images so powerful that he heard conversations and saw inside the lives of the people who had once worked in the house.

In essence this story was one of deep regret, choices, obsession and loneliness. It touched on many aspects of the human condition, but more often than not they were focused on the unhappy ones. I expected to have more of a ghostly aspect rather than harsh realism where ghosts are wallowing in the mistakes they’ve made.

The character development was exceptional for Chuck as the affable, nice guy who made his way in the world and felt guilty as he laid down his hammers and became more of a white-collar figure and suffered imposter syndrome as he became more affluent.

The second character that stood out was Sophia Weatherlee. It was difficult to know if she felt guilt for the deaths her husband’s arms companies assisted with by making munitions used in warfare or if she was always about her own needs and wants and used this to manipulate other people’s feelings?

Although this novel was well developed and very well written, I struggled to get through it, because it was more about the grim aspects of real-life relationships than the ethereal and commonly assumed adventures of ghosts or spirits and where they might travel to once the body is gone.

I actually felt badly at the end for Raymond who spent his life retelling the history of the house for minimal pay after the ghosts hijacked his personal story.

Thank you so much to the publisher and Netgalley for offering me a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

Interesting that no one else has provided feedback on this book - not sure of the significance. I had read about the Winchester Mystery House but never visited so I was very interested to learn more about it. As I was reading I kept thinking that the dialogue, especially Sarah, sounded like a script, like a play. So I felt better when I read the notes at the end and found that this concept was originally written as a play. This was a very creative way to present an already intriguing story. The blind narrator is used very effectively to describe what he is "seeing" and pull the reader into the story. However, after a while the story just dragged along and I began to stop caring what happened - I ended up skimming through about half the book. I skipped to the last few chapters and was satisfied with how all the loose ends were tied up, but disappointed with the ending of the backstory with Chuck and Dee. I wish I had seen the play and skipped the book. I appreciate the opportunity to read this ARC and provide feedback.