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The House of Ashes
By: Stuart Neville
Publisher: Soho Press
Pub Date: 09/7/21
This book flips from the past to present. Sara and her husband Damien have left England for his home in North Ireland after Sara has a nervous breakdown and attempted sucide.
Late one evening while Damien sleeps, an old woman starts banging on the door demanding to be let in. When Sara opens the door she rushes in demanding to know where the children are and what has Sara done to them. When Damien comes rushing down the stairs he knows who she is. Mary lives in a care home. What Sara doesn’t know is this house belongs to Damien’s ancestors and it has a dark past.
The true horror of the way these women were treated by the men around them made reading hard at times. It’s definitely an intense read and isn’t for the faint of heart. As you read, you learn more and more about Damien’s family and how they will do anything to protect their secrets.

I enjoyed this book, once I figured out how it was written. I have never read anything by this author. I will look for more from him. I would recommend this book. It was a dark, heart shattering book.

This is a horrifying, disturbing psychological thriller. It was not for me, but many people will like it. Sara is having a difficult time coping in her life as a newly wed to Damien that decides to start over on new grounds by moving to Northern Ireland. She accepts the idea until she is disturb by a visitor visibly covered in blood and had escaped from a care facility. Mary warns Sarah the house was hers 30 years ago and it is haunted.

The story reveals when Mary was a child she witnessed a tragic event in the house. After she is taken away, this sets Sara on a historical hunt for information on the house. Her husband becomes a different person than the one she married. His jealousy and control of her does not set with her. She is in a place with no friends, no vehicle and no job, so she spends her time looking into the horrors of the house.

It is not one I would say I enjoyed because I'm not one who likes abusive relationships and abuse of children. This one takes a deeper step into chilling, violent episodes.
Thank you NetGalley and Soho Crime for this copy in exchange for my honest review.

• It feels so weird to say I liked a book like this, because it is quite upsetting and heavy. It is an intense and disturbing read. I appreciate good storytelling though. So, despite the very tough subject, I found myself captivated by the story, which is a testament to how well it was written.

• This story is told from a few different POVs – one from the present, the rest from the past. The multiple POVs aren’t confusing at all, and they provide a depth to the characters that I don’t think would be there otherwise. Reading from the POVs of the women in the past really made me ache for their situation and pulled me into the story more than I would have imagined.

• This is a ghost story – there is definitely a supernatural element. However, the scary part is what happens in real life.

• There are a lot of triggers in this book – abuse, kidnapping, and murder to name a few – and they are described in graphic detail.

• This book does have a satisfactory ending – not a happy one, but one that at least heads in a positive direction.

• I think my biggest takeaway from this book, and what I find the most heartbreaking, is that what I just read is very likely happening right now to someone… and there is nothing I can do about it because I may never even know about it.

Thank you @netgalley and @soho_press for an eARC of this book, which I have read and reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

So it took me awhile to focus on this read, but I finally made it and god was I right to hold on ! It is definitely a must read for those who like chilling, dark and heavy atmostphere !

I have sold it to a couple of my clients and they all came back quite happy about it.

Can an old house carry the spirits of the past occupants? 60 years ago young women were grabbed from the streets to be slaves to the owner and his sons. Now the current owner's wife sees the spirits. The book tells the story of the slave girls and a child named Mary. There is also the story of the new owner and his wife that received the house as a gift from his dad. The book is a sad tale of how relationships can go so terribly wrong. What makes men go do far off the rails to treat women so poorly? I found the story rather depressing and terribly sad. But the book is well done with plenty of detail for each character to tell how they came to be in the situation to be in this house.

I am making the decision to pass on this one for now. I have read some reviews and I do not think I am in the headspace to properly review this book.

The House of Ashes by Stuart Neville is an incredibly hard book for me to review, and I want you to think about that when you look at my rating and what I say about it. I think it will blow a lot of readers away to the point of giving it a higher rating than I did, so if you think it sounds good or you are already a fan of Neville, then you should probably read it. For me, having never read this author before and not remembering what the book was about, it came as quite a shock. I don't think I was fully in the mood for it when I started, but by the time I got about halfway, I was definitely feeling it. It is an incredibly dark and sinister read that deals with different types of violence and abuse mixed in with a supernatural quality. I think the beginning will pull a lot of people in, and it's definitely something that grabbed me right away.

There were quite a few parts of The House of Ashes that broke my heart, and this is definitely a mystery wrapped up in an emotional read. The story is told from a handful of different viewpoints, with the main ones being Mary and Sara. We get a nice mixture of both past and present, and I really liked the way both Mary and Sara's stories ended up tying together. I was also a big fan of the audiobook which is narrated by Caroline Lennon. I can't even begin to imagine the difficulties that go into reading a book like this, and Lennon handled it beautifully. I could feel all of the emotions and that made this even more of a heavy read. Neville's writing was incredibly impressive, and I will definitely be reading everything else he writes.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

A dark and chilling gothic thriller centered around trauma and family secrets set in Northern Ireland. The amount and type of abuse was more than I can handle in a novel so this was a DNF for me.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own.

Unfortunately, I was unable to finish The House of Ashes. This book was way too dark and creepy for me and I had to put it aside. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book. Since I was unable to finish this book, I will not be posting a review to any other website.

The House of Ashes is a solid gothic thriller set in Northern Ireland told in dual timelines. Perfect for fans of Tana French and Gillian Flynn, the dark story will have readers on the edge of their seats.

The misogyny and abuse was too much for me. The writing itself was fine, but the story was a bit irredeemable for me. Much better thrillers out there - skip this one.

This is a very interesting read telling the story of a modern Englishwoman whose husband isolates her in an old house in Northern Ireland. What she discovers is that the house has a terrible history that her husband has kept secret from her. A history with a lot of similarities to her own situation. She discovers this history bit by bit and by meeting an old woman in a care facility who survived the horrors that took place in the house. Definitely held your interest as you found out more and more about what happened in the house.

This one is dark! Set in Northern Ireland, if there is a genre for Irish noir, I would place this book there. Featuring dual storylines, ghosts, and a mystery, this one was a compelling read.

The modern-day storyline features Sara and Damien, recently moved to Damien’s homeland of Northern Ireland for a fresh start and clean slate after her mental health issues. We get glimpses into Sara’s past when she was a happier woman with friends from college and a job. This was before Damien came into her life and took those things slowly away.

The storyline from the past features Mary and several other women who used to live in the house that Sara and Damien are remodeling. Mary’s early life was a violent and terrible one and these passages were extremely difficult to read.

These two storylines show that many women have a rough road in life and there are men who are dominating and violent.

While this one was very dark, it was compelling, and I had to keep reading to find out what would happen. The ending definitely leaves some things unresolved, and this reader hopes for the best for all involved, especially Sara and Mary!

A suspenseful, chilling tale which reminded me of a gothic mystery. A mysterious old woman, a husband with secrets, a wife in a new country with no one to confide in.

Good storyline, a bit of mystery with a bit of supernatural. Felt like the ending was rushed/unfinished.

The House of Ashes is a stand alone dual POV, dual timeline Irish mystery.

I was really excited about this book because it was pegged as a book for fans of Tana French (who I love) and Gillian Flynn.

In the House of Ashes we follow two women - Sara who was recently uprooted from her home and has moved with her abusive husband to Northern Ireland and Mary who lives a life of imprisonment at the hands of her father.

This book is DARK. It is well written but it was just soooo emotionally draining that it took me weeks to get through it.

TW: Abuse, servitude of women, domestic violence, emotional abuse

Wow, this was a thriller that actually broke my heart at times! The pain and abuse throughout the pages was difficult to read at times, and I honestly had to put the book down and take a break. It's a strong story that drives you to finish so that you know what happens!

Dark and intense. A mystery set 60 years apart and centering around a house called The House of Ash.
This book pulled one of my triggers, the abuse and enforced servitude of women at the hands of what my granddaughter Rue, she's four, would call badies. Despicable men with little or no conscience. I think had I been reading and not listening I would have put the book aside. Not because it isn't good, it is, but because of the subject. The narrator though, Caroline Lennon hooked me completely and I wanted to find out the truth of what happened in this house as well as the fate of the current occupant.

Can houses where horrific events occured maintain the ghostly remnants of the past? I think so, and this story, this house, is a case in point. I felt for the characters in this book, their bravery in the face of adversity, their will to live and the hope they maintain against all odds. I loved young Mary and the present Mary, now in her seventies, as well. Plus, I needed to know who these children were, what was their purpose. All was answered in this difficult but well drawn read.

A sad, dark tale of women being abused by violent men. Told in two time lines. A touch of supernatural. I found it a decent story but rather slow going. The ending seemed a bit unresolved to me.