This book fills you with a sense of fear and foreboding. Within the first few chapters I knew I was in for one hell of a ride. It is fast paced, eerie, and will fill you with a sense of dread. While you smell death and decay in every breath you take. I love a book that is based around a house and this one takes the cake. Holly is writing her newest screenplay, and she knows it will be a hit. Her girlfriend, Nisa, is amping it up with her stellar voice. Her best friend, Stevie, will be the Devil Dog. They are spending a weekend in upstate New York to work and get away from the hustle and bustle. When Holly is out exploring some of the smaller towns, a road calls to her. As she makes her way up, she comes across a mansion. Not beautiful, but large, imposing, and completely isolated. It is giving off strange vibes, but Holly must investigate, and she is filled with the urge to stay.

Hill House is the perfect place to gather all of the people working on the play for two weeks. To really dive deep and get into character. Upon arrival the house is dark, shadows lurking, the rooms far from lush and inviting. It is perfect to get into character for the Witching Night. The retelling of a woman who was killed for being a witch. The house takes on its own character. Seeming to entrance each and every one of them. The large black hares that pop up everywhere. The whispering voices, the sounds that crash, every single thing making them jump.

This book is perfect for spooky season. It had me holding my breath, as my heartrate rose, the tingle on the back of my neck singing. The feeling of someone's eyes on me. Elizabeth Hand wrote a spine chilling read that will leave you swallowing the words at breakneck speeds. I do wish there was more clarification on certain parts of the book. I will definitely be thinking about them. Thank you to Elizabeth Hand and Mulholland Books for this terrifying read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mulholland Books for this ARC. I’m a huge Shirley Jackson fan and when I saw this book I immediately wanted to read it. The Haunting Of Hill House is one of my favorite classic horror books so I was excited to be back into that world with this modern retelling.

I enjoyed the short chapters, but I found myself struggling to like the characters or their reason for staying at Hill House. This book was definitely creepy, but not very scary. I felt the ending was too rushed and I wasn’t the biggest fan of the theater aspect of the story.

All and all, Elizabeth is a great writer and what an honor to get to write about Hill House! I would recommend this book to people who want to be creeped out by a scary haunted house.

Frustrated playwright Holly has spent the last 20 years teaching at a private school and trying to forget her notorious past.

With a grant to write a new play, she takes the semester off and goes upstate with her girlfriend Nisa, hoping for inspiration.

While exploring, Holly turns down a dirt road, inexplicably drawn to explore. Hill House beckons.

Holly rents the house for two weeks to work on her play. With Nisa, their friend Stevie, and infamous actress Amanda, the group move into the mansion to work on Holly’s play. But secrets rise to the surface, and unexplained things start happening.

As a huge Shirley Jackson fan, I was so excited to read this book. I also love Elizabeth Hand’s novel “Wylding Hall.” I’m happy to say, this story lived up to my expectations!

Hand brilliantly recaptured the creepy dread of Jackson’s novel. This isn’t a blood-and-guts horror novel; this is a quieter kind of scary story, relying on unexplained noises, disappearing visions, and creating a general sense of unease.

I wish I had read the original again before starting this book, just to see if there were any details that carried over. But you absolutely do not have to read the original first. This is a stand-alone story.

This would make a perfect read for spooky season!

A Haunting On The Hill
by Elizabeth Hand

Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book to review!

This was a strange modern Gothic horror novel. Even though it was super creepy, it seemed to miss the mark someplace. I really liked it but did not love it. All the characters were severely flawed, intentionally I believe. Selfish, narcissistic even sociopaths, similar to the house that haunts them.

I havent read Haunting of Hill House yet so I cant compare the two but this writing is just super.

Thank you @Netgalley for my copy!

3.5 stars

This was a great selection for a spooky season read, and I did enjoy it. I can’t say, however, that it really lived up to my expectations. Perhaps I was expecting more since it’s based on Hill House. Still, a solid book that I think many will really enjoy.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book.

A bunch of theatre nerds end up renting a super creepy mansion in the middle of literally nowhere after the lead nerd gets on purpose lost and finds it at the end of a miles long drive. She also has some encounters with a creepy giant black hare and a woman wielding a knife. The nerds are into witches so it makes it all more compelling.
All the nerds arrive after meeting with the owner and arranging to pay for a few weeks rent.
One older nerd is like schizophrenic. She acts like my brother and she is convinced she can do super human things like hear bats.
Day one wine spills on the table cloth and spreads like blood. Everyone is telling them to leave but they don't. They plan to rehearse but I don't think they actually do that.
The creepiness builds until the end.
This was okay. I love books where the home has a personality.

As a long time lover of Shirley Jackson and The Haunting Of Hill House this book was one of my most anticipated reads of the year.
I couldn't wait to return to the infamous house and see what horrors awaited us and I could not be more pleased.

Elizabeth Hand takes us back into the guts of Hill House in A Haunting On The Hill as Holly, a playwright, rents the house out for 2 weeks. She goes there with her girlfriend, plus two other artists to work on the play and run lines. The absolute dread that I felt the entire time as I read while I waited to see how this ill fated adventure would play out was amazing. The entire story sunk right into my bones, I was chilled from beginning to end.
For a more in-depth review, please check out my spoiler free YouTube review attached below.

The characters are irritating. The constant "singing" is annoying. I really tried, but ended up DNF at around 30%.

Maybe because I didn't read Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, but I just did not like this book. The characters, the writing... it just wasn't for me, which is unfortunate because I was really looking forward to this book.

A Haunting on Hill House by Elizabeth Hand is a spiritual successor to the haunted horror classic, The Haunting of Hill House. This book follows Holly, a struggling playwright who is on the cusp of her big break. Her play has a grant so all they need do is practice. Holly discovers Hill House, a creepy mansion with a gothic vibe and decides to start working more on the play there with her group of actors. But there is more to Hill House than meets the eye.

I haven’t read The Haunting of Hill House so I don’t know how well this compares. It’s not a retelling, it’s an authorized continuation so I wasn’t expecting the same story that I have a little knowledge of. But this just didn’t exactly hit perfectly for me. A lot of the writing was very immersive and atmospheric and the short chapters made it very compulsively readable. But the characters lacked a lot of depth and the decision to tell the story in first person and third person was very jarring.

There were a few creepy elements-the mysterious black hare being especially eerie. There just wasn’t enough to me. I read the majority of this at night hoping to be scared and there was nothing very frightening about it. I don’t know exactly what I expected, but I wanted a little bit more. Maybe this works well if you are a fan of the original and more classic gothic literature.

This was just a fun book! I wish I had waited for Halloween but a spooky house is good anytime of the year. I actually liked it better than the Shirley Jackson book because while none of the characters were super sympathic, they were more sympathetic than I found the originals to be.

I liked the details like the wood panels and how you'd see some scenes from different perspectives so it felt nuanced. Not only was it a story about a weird house but also about relationships and how people interact with each other and age.

Thank you @netgalley for the ARC of A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand. This is perfect for readers who love Shirley Jackson and haunted houses. It was a great start to spooky season! It was creepy and unsettling. The descriptions of the ghosts made you feel as if you were in the house with them.

This is a modern continuation of Jackson's Hill House. Holly is a struggling playwright. She comes across Hill House and decides it is the perfect setting to practice her new play. She moves in with her girlfriend, and two friends who are helping her with the play. The four soon become overcome by ghosts and begin to turn on each other

I quickly grew tired of the characters, their inner thoughts and interactions with each other, had me not caring what happened to them. The horror couldn’t save this novel in my eyes.

I am a big haunted house horror lover, and A Haunting on the Hill is an extension of original The Haunting of Hill House. Author Elizabeth Hand provides expansive descriptions of the house and its dark atmosphere. I was pulled into the setting as our characters, who were often unlikable, settle in. I enjoyed how the the house created tension and rifts between the group. This story is perfect for fall reading and those who enjoy a spooky read.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced reader copy. This is my honest review.

I had pretty high expectations going into this book, and they were met. A Haunting on the Hill is a great successor to The Haunting of Hill House. It absolutely nails the vibes, the characters are all interesting, their reason for being in Hill House is right up my alley, and I love the questions the reader is left with at the end.

Well, I loved the cover!
I finished reading The Haunting of Hill House last week. As I read this, I could see a lot of similarities to Jackson's original.
I enjoyed the strange hare and when the house 'did its thing,' but I found the characters dull, and setup familiar.
Chapters were shirt, and 70-some chapters seems unnecessary. Overall, a quick, modern rehash that never taps into the dread and bleakness that Jackson conveyed so well.

I first read "The Haunting of Hill House" in high school and was a huge fan. I've always loved creepy haunted house stories, and that one grabbed a piece of my teenage heart and never let go. I wasn't impressed when I saw the movie adaptation with Luke Wilson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Lily Taylor in the late 1990s. Then came Mike Flanagan's Netflix series, and while it differed significantly from the book, it was a nice and creepy extension of the Hill House legacy. I am happy to report that this book also earned a spot in that legacy. Elizabeth Hand successfully brings the reader back into the world of Hill House, a place shrouded in darkness and haunted by a tragic history.

This story follows Holly Sherwin, a struggling playwright who finally receives a grant to develop her play, The Witch of Edmonton. While out for a morning drive while on vacation, Holly stumbles across Hill House, a huge and slightly creepy mansion hidden away outside a small town. Something draws Holly to this house, and she gets the idea that it would be the perfect setting for her and the actors she has hired to workshop her new play. She wants them all to shack up in the mansion for a few weeks and put the finishing touches on the script. She convinces her girlfriend Nisa that this is a great idea, and it's not long before the two of them move in along with their friend Stevie, who will do the sound design and will act as one of the characters in the play, and Amanda, a well-known actress who has agreed to star as the witch in the play.

From the moment Holly steps foot inside Hill House, the atmosphere becomes palpable. Hand's descriptive prose creates a sense of unease. It's not long before our characters hear strange voices carrying on conversations at night, strange smells, and mysterious sounds that echo down the halls. Time itself seems to have a mind of its own, twisting and bending within the walls of the house.

As the characters settle in, they find themselves growing suspicious of one another as the malevolent force of Hill House begins to break them down. Despite warnings from the housekeepers and a nearby neighbor that they need to leave before the house attacks, the four refuse to go, and it's when a severe storm sets in that we, the readers, know things are about to get extra creepy.

While the atmosphere and tension were excellent - and reminiscent of the original book - I couldn't help but wish for more ghostly apparitions and eerie occurrences. Mike Flanagan's version was absolutely chilling, and I went into this book expecting that same level of dread and eerieness. I had to remind myself that many of the scares in his series were visual - things happening in the background - and you can't do those things in a book.

I think one of the creepiest elements of the book was the presence of the hare - this huge, black rabbit that would randomly show up and smile; it was both fun and creepy and added an extra layer of mystery to the already unsettling atmosphere. Additionally, the figure that Holly sees in the forest is terrifying - I definitely wanted a little more of that.

The characters themselves are well-developed and layered, each with their own personal demons. Hand skillfully intertwines their individual stories with the overarching narrative, creating a compelling and intricate web of relationships. As the evil within Hill House begins to take hold, the tensions between the characters escalate, leading to startling revelations and heartbreaking moments.

This is a gripping and eerie novel that will satisfy fans of the original book by Shirley Jackson. If you go in after only watching the Netflix series, you may be disappointed. As I mentioned earlier, the TV series was able to add several creepy and downright scary moments by showcasing hidden things in the shadows that you can't do in a book. The book definitely feels like the original in that the hauntings are mostly implied, which leaves you wondering how much is real and how much is happening in the person's head.

Thank you to Mulholland Books for letting me read A HAUNTING ON THE HILL early. This one publishes on September 15.

I wanted to love this book but I just didn't. I think that if you didn't love the Shirley Jackson original, then you probably wont love this one either. But I also think if you did love the Shirley Jackson original you might not like this kind of copy cat version. I have mixed feelings on that, obviously.

This book definitely had a creepy, eery vibe to it! It wasn't my favorite but still a good spooky read. I think I wasn't a big fan of any of the characters. They weren't super likeable to me! Overall tho I would still recommend to readers who want a creepy horror.