Sundial is a dark psychological thriller sisterhood, motherhood, and the bonds within them. It takes place on the main character’s old family home called Sundial, which is a sprawling ranch in the middle of the Mojave desert. The novel switches between past and future as it slowly reveals what happened to Rob and her family.

This is (almost) exactly the kind of psychological horror I seek out. The plot about the two siblings where the older one has a strained relationship with mom and acts “evil” while the younger is the “favorite” reminded me a lot of The Push. However I liked Sundial much better than The Push because it had a lot more substance. The story was very well thought out with many little details that all came together at the end. Also, it contained moral and philosophical dilemmas that I will be ruminating on for a while. The plot and the themes were very interesting. In the second half it was especially hard to put down.

The main thing that caught me off guard with this book was that animal testing (specifically with dogs) was not only present in the book, it was a main plot device. I don’t have an issue with this as a plot device in general, but I am sensitive and an animal lover. Animal cruelty and gore is one of the few things I don’t like to read about. There are dogs that are violently killed in the book, albeit without gory or gratuitous descriptions. It was on the verge of being too much for me but I’m glad that the author did not glorify the cruelty in any way, and the main character against the animal testing.

Other trigger warnings include suicide, blood, self harm, and heavy domestic abuse.

Overall I would definitely recommend this book to other horror readers, while also warning them of the trigger warnings.

This novel surprised me. I was finding it dragging a bit at the start. The style of writing was different, which I enjoyed, but it took a little while to really get going. The use of flashback and the dueling timelines were clear and easy to follow, but I just hadn't been "grabbed" by it until fairly far into the story. But then, when it did grab me, wow. I found myself still awake and reading at 3 am because I had to know the ending. I know the author has another popular book trending at the moment, but this was my first of her novels - it won't be the last, though.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy to read and review. All opinions are my own.

Deep family secrets from the past and current family disputes and drama lead you into the heat and barrenness of the Mojave desert where it all began…and continues.

The book rotates between two POV of Rob, a mother of two daughters and wife to Irving, and Callie, one of the daughters of Rob. I loved hearing both of their perspectives of what was going on in the family and what fears they had individually.

I would not say I am a person who seeks out the horror genre….and this was not a scary book…but the whole idea and premise of the book is horror. There were little scenes of grossness, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Most of the horror happened towards the end of the book as the story fully reveals itself. I did not see it coming!

Catronia Ward has a way of leading the reader right where she wants you and does such a great job of storytelling and evolution in the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for the advance reader e-copy.

After reading The Last House on Needless Street, I couldn't wait to read Sundial. And it did not disappoint!

From the beginning, I had a disturbing sense of unease in the pit of my stomach, and I mean that in the best way. Sundial is a roller-coaster ride that is full of psychological twists and unsettling turns that left me creeped out and bewitched. The layers in this book kept me intrigued and curious throughout. Ward does an excellent job in crafting the characters and keeping the reader invested, but not quite able to figure out how the pieces of this bizarre puzzle fall into place until the end.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

If you like dark, creepy, gruesome stories with emotionally broken characters, you will love this book. Like her previous book, this one has plenty of twists and turns. The ending will have you thinking about all the things that could happen next. Catriona Ward knows how to write these kind of books that are not for the faint of heart. I found both this one and her last a bit too much for me, but they are both shining examples of this kind of book

Wow, Sundial was a mind-blowing experience. There are many novels categorized as horror, which fail to meet the genre's expectations, but I was horrified for the majority of this read. Partly in disgust of a few descriptions, and other times at the fine line between depravity and good intentions the characters vacillated on. Nevertheless, I had very mixed feelings about Sundial until the ending, which I was not expecting at all. Perhaps other readers guessed the twist beforehand, but it came out of left field for me, and it ending up solidifying my opinion that Catriona Ward might be giving Stephen King a run for his money. Now, I'm just hoping the tension in my shoulders leaves soon.

TW: child abuse, violence by children, murder, extensive animal abuse and torture

Really liked this one and it kept me guessing. A lot of flawed, disturbed characters in this one. CW for domestic abuse, animal abuse, infidelity, death, violence, you name it.

Having enjoyed this and Ward's previous title The Last House on Needless Street I'll continue to look out for her future books!

Rob, mother of two young daughters, senses something is off about her 12 year old Callie, She seems to be chatting with imaginary people, collecting bones of dead animals, and may have even attempted to poison her own little sister. Left with no other choice. Rob knows that she must bring Callie back to her childhood home, a now abandoned compound in the Mojave desert called Sundial. In order to correct Callie's strange and chilling behaviors, Rob must face her own past and uncover long buried family secrets before it's too late for them both....

This was my first Catriona Ward book and after hearing so much praise for The House on Needless Street, I was pumped to get approved for this ARC. Well, the hype over this author is real. There were parts that were out there and bizzare, but I enjoyed the unusual story-telling and unique way Ward creates surreal images in the mind of the reader. This book reads like a fever dream and I found myself often wondering if the characters were hallucinating or if some were even real at all. It was wild.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read in exchange for my honest review.

This story was so eerie and mind blowing. First, I loved the writing. It was excellent and the marriage between Rob and Irving was incredibly depressing and believable to read. I loved the internal dialogue of Rob. It was dark and secretive. Things people in bad marriages don’t admit. Callie was also creepy. Creepy kids are always terrifying when it is done right. The animal abuse was hard to read but overall I enjoyed this book.

'Sundial' is a masterfully crafted work of horror fiction. Every disturbing and uncomfortable story beat serves to compound onto the overarching feeling of dread laced through every word, and Ward's visceral imagery elicits a constant undertone of nauseating unease.

Ward expertly executes a knife's edge balance between multiple timelines and points of views as a means to keep readers teetering at the edge of their seats page after suspenseful page. Each chapter ending just on the precipice of a boiling point that leave you wound tight with anticipation for the return to each narrator and time period. Each hard turn the plot takes is no less jarring for how meticulously the groundwork is laid and there are little to no lulls in which readers could get too comfortable.

This alternating structure provides a series of twisted parallels that make you feel like you're viewing each character and event through a hall of mirrors, each reflection distorted more than the last.

That said, as objectively incredible as Catriona Ward's 'Sundial' is, I absolutely recommend looking up content warnings before diving in if things like animal harm or familial/domestic violence are difficult subjects for you.

Wow!! I could not put this down. I am normally pretty observant and I feel like I can see where things are going? But this kept me guessing and on my toes constantly.

Twisty in the best of ways, my feelings about Rob, Jack and Callie were constantly shifting with each new piece of information doled out.

The pacing was perfect, each chapter an uncomfortable revelation, another unpleasant but tantalizing layer of the onion that is Sundial.

Ummmm HELLO!!!!!!

If you haven't yet discovered Catriona Ward, you are late to one hell of a party.

As we all saw, The Last House on Needless Street, broke the internet this past fall. I was one of the incredibly lucky ARC readers to be given the opportunity to read this book early. Now, this is where my utter fascination with Catriona Ward began. I could not believe how well that story came together and still recommend it to every single person who will listen to me gush over my love for this book.

Now, Sundial.

Ward, just gets better and better. Just when I think she cant get any better, she does. Catriona Ward, surpasses all expectations and will one up any book you think is the best book you ever read. Yes, yes, I know. I am totally fan-girling over here but she deserves it.

Sundial was amazing, but in true Ward fashion you can not review this book and talk about the plot without spoiling something. I love how" bookstagram" has come together with this unspoken oath to never spill a spoiler for a Ward book.

So here I sit, I will tell you this book is incredible, one you wont want to miss, one that will leave you speechless and filled with emotion but I will also say.... "i'll never tell" ;)

Go do yourself a favor and pre-order this book and while you wait, if you are part of the 1 percent who has not yet read The Last House on Needless Street, you need to, NOW.

I tried so incredibly hard to get into this but I just couldn't. The writing was well done but the story itself I could not bring myself to care about at all.

The nitty-gritty: Catriona Ward raises the bar on her latest psychological thriller, a dark and frenetic tale full of family secrets, blood and pain.

I have no idea how to review this book, but I’m going to try. Folks, this is one fucked up story, and I mean that in the best way, because I really did enjoy Sundial for the most part. This is one of those times where I wish I didn’t give star ratings, because I’ve had a hard time settling on one, but I’ve finally decided to give it four stars, knocking off points for one element in particular that I despised—which I’ll get to later. I get the sense that Catriona Ward is trying to top herself, after The Last House on Needless Street, which I reviewed last year and loved, but topping yourself isn’t always a good thing. Sundial is full of despicable people who all seem to hate each other. I don’t think I’ve ever run across a book where I couldn’t find even one character to root for, and there are a few trigger warnings that need to be stated up front: cruelty to animals, physical and psychological spousal abuse, and child abuse are the big ones. Dog lovers take note: think twice before picking this up.

The story takes place in two timelines, past and present, and is told in alternating chapters by Rob, a woman in an abusive marriage who is trying to make sense of her life, and her eldest daughter Callie, a twelve-year old who is demonstrating disturbing behavior and seems to be a threat to the family. When Rob’s nine-year-old daughter Annie swallows a bottle of her father’s diabetes medication, and all signs point to Callie being responsible. Rob, who has been abused for years by her husband Irving, is determined to keep her family from unraveling, and so she announces that she’s taking Callie to Sundial, the remote desert ranch where Rob grew up. Rob is convinced that she can mend the rift between her and Callie and maybe even “fix” her, and she aims to do this by revealing the uncanny events that happened to Rob as a child. The story unfolds as Rob tells her story to Callie in chapters designated as “Rob: Then,” and alternates with chapters told in the present by both Rob and Callie during their trip to Sundial. Interspersed among all of this are short excerpts from a book Rob is writing called Arrowood.

Rob’s story begins when she and her twin sister Jack are seventeen and have lived at Sundial for the past twelve years. Run by a man named Falcon and his assistant Mia, the girls grew up thinking their real mother died years ago, and that Mia is their stepmother. All these years, the girls have been homeschooled and have never left Sundial. Living an almost idyllic life—playing in the desert, milking the cows, and occasionally assisting with Mia’s pack of dogs—it’s all the girls have ever known. But both Rob and Jack long to stretch their wings and go away to college, if only Falcon would allow it. Opportunities to leave arise for both girls, and they seize the moment, only to be thrust into events they have no control over.

Looming over the girls’ childhood are many mysteries. Mia has dozens of stray dogs in the pens surrounding the ranch, and she’s doing scientific research and performing experiments on them to make them behave. But how are the dogs connected to Rob and Jack? Why won’t Falcon let them leave? And where did they really come from?

After reading The Last House on Needless Street, I fully expected there to be an epic twist or two in Sundial, and I wasn’t disappointed. Things are not what they seem on the surface. Every character in this story is hiding the truth in one way or another, which makes it very hard to sympathize with anyone. Callie collects the bones of dead neighborhood animals and makes bizarre artwork with them, but does that mean she tried to poison her sister? Annie appears innocent, but what if she isn’t? Irving is an absolute shithole of a human being and does terrible things to Rob, but is Rob completely innocent herself? And what about Sundial? What really happened out there in the desert, and what is the big secret Rob finds buried in the backyard inside a Snoopy lunch box? There are layers upon layers of mysteries, and Ward keeps the momentum going by peeling back those layers little by little, stretching out the tension until the reader is ready to scream.

I also love Catriona Ward’s writing. It’s evocative and lush, and I absolutely love her imagery, especially the creepy parts of the story. She brings the eeriness and danger of the desert to life, although to be honest, it’s the humans you want to watch out for in this book. Let’s take Rob’s and Irving’s relationship, for example. From the first page, the reader wonders why they are together, as they seem to hate each other. This sets the tone for the rest of the book, which is full of fraught relationships that don’t make sense on the surface, but later take on a weird normalcy, for some reason.

I mentioned that I didn’t really like any of the characters, but I did have a soft spot for a “ghost” named Pale Callie. "Warm" Callie (Rob's daughter) can see the spirits of the animals whose bones she’s collected, and she also has a “friend” named Callie as well, ghost or imaginary friend, I’ll let you decide. Callie calls all the spirits she sees “pales,” and when you learn who Pale Callie is at the end of the story, I’m betting your mind will be blown just like mine was! Whether or not the pales are real is just one more piece of the puzzle.

As for negatives, there is a whole lot going on in Sundial: infidelity, abuse, animal cruelty, pregnancies, a miscarriage, a case of the chickenpox, creepy children, even ghost dogs. At times the story felt over-crowded and chaotic, although I have to applaud Ward for following through on many of the little details she drops into the story, which feel insignificant at first, but later come together beautifully. And to be honest, I didn’t understand the significance of the Arrowood chapters, which have a fairy tale-like quality to them and seem to be Rob’s way of exorcizing her past demons. I’m not sure these chapters were really necessary, given everything else going on in the story.

And the element that almost pushed me over the edge was the way dogs were used and treated in this story. I won’t go into details, but trust me when I say these sections are extremely upsetting. There is a redemptive moment at the end, but for me it wasn’t enough to make up for the hurt and pain that came before it.

But negatives aside, I don’t regret reading Sundial at all. Catriona Ward knows how to take an unusual story idea and blow her readers’ minds. Once you read the first page, you won’t want to stop reading until the bloody, bitter end.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

Unsettled. Creeped out. Off balance. Those are the three terms that come to mind if I had to describe how I felt reading “Sundial” by Catriona Ward. If you read Ward’s breakout hit “The Last House on Needless Street”, you know it’s time to get on board the hype train. Our destination is Sundial, Rob’s childhood home in the Mojave Desert. Rob’s daughter Callie seems to be exhibiting some truly disturbing tendencies, and Rob knows Sundial is the only place she can deal with Callie’s behavior and confront her own past. What follows is an epic tale of psychological horror – intense, twisty, downright freaky, and above all, captivating in the best way. With complex characters and an original storyline, Ward’s newest novel will blow your mind. Don’t miss out on what is sure to be one of the biggest hits of 2022!

This author is becoming one of my must reads. I loved The Last House on the Left and fell even deeper with this one. Wow. The level of psychological layers she builds into the story kept me entralled as the main character (unreliable-yay!) muddled her way through some pretty tough family dramas-and they just kept coming. 5 flaming stars and I have been telling all of my customers about this amazing book.

All Rob wanted was to escape her past and live an ordinary life in the suburbs. However, when her oldest daughter, Callie, begins collecting animal bones and whispering to imaginary friends, she recognizes that there is the same darkness inside Callie that resides within herself.

To protect the rest of her family, she decides to take Callie to revisit her childhood home of Sundial and confront the dark secrets that lie buried there.

Sundial by Catriona Ward is a twisty-turvy and unnerving domestic thriller that’ll leave you squirming in your seat.

I was first drawn in by the gorgeous cover and wanted to love this one so badly. However, the book ended up as a bit of a mixed bag for me.

What I loved about it? There’s something raw and visceral about the prose, and Ward does an excellent job of placing us inside of the characters’ heads. The beginning of the book starts off so strong. It felt like a contained, intimate portrait of motherhood, and that’s the aspect of the story that gripped me the most.

However, as the story progresses, the plot derailed and became more and more farfetched to me. It felt almost like the inverse of The Last House on Needless Street where the seemingly bizarre at first pieces gradually clicked neatly into place.

Overall, Sundial is one dark and disturbing psychological ride, but ultimately, it’s not as well-crafted as its predecessor.

This book is hard for me to review because I have mixed feelings about it. It was a well written psychological horror with a creative and unique plot. The story alternated between Rob’s past and present and had POVs from both Rob and Callie. It was twisty and kept me guessing about what was going to happen next. The ending was surprising and very well done.

HOWEVER, there is animal abuse involved, mainly of dogs. It was difficult to read, but at the same time seemed unrealistic at times as it had a sci-fi element to it. So, while it didn’t bother me quite as much as it normally would have, I did skim a lot of those parts and would not have read this book had I known about that aspect of it.

There were also “book within a book” chapters that I felt were unnecessary and didn’t add anything to the story.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tor Nightfire and Catriona Ward for letting me read this one early. This one hits the shelves on March 1!

I had really really high hopes for this one. I really loved Ward’s previous release, The House on Needless Street and I was ready to get weird with her yet again with Sundial. It did get weird but not in the way I wanted. The storyline was lengthy and the back and forth timeline felt a little dragged out to me. In the end, this one just didn’t stand up to her previous book and that’s ok. That being said I think it would be a great film. If you read other reviews of this one you’ll see I am not in the majority here. So I do encourage you to check this one out still! Please, let me know if you do because I’d love to discuss this one!

All Rob wanted was to live a normal life. She was so close but she can’t escape what’s in her blood. She fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to many imaginary friends. Robs sees what’s hiding within Callie and it reminds her so much of everything she’s trying to escape from. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, Sundial, where she will have to make a choice. Callie is worried about her mother and is starting to fear that only one of them will leave Sundial. Mother and daughter embark on a journey of truth in hopes that they can create a better future.

FAntastic contemporary horror -- really effective and eerie, with ribbons of supernatural scifi running through it all the way along. The characters were well-developed, each with a sensationally compelling point of view. The manipulative dynamic between Rob and her husband is totally horrific. You truly do not know what the hell is going on, but the creepy atmosphere builds and builds and the questions just pop. I loved it! I'll recommend it to anyone who loves psychological horror or sci fi.