This was a book I can definitively say I've never read anything like it before, it was such a unique concept. I loved how eerie and unsettling it was, the author did a fantastic job with their descriptions of everything. I could visualize a lot of this book which typically doesn't happen for me.

The Haunting of Velkwood:⁣
⁣
Thank you @sagapressbooks and @simon.audio #SagaSaysCrew for my gifted book! ⁣
⁣
“Family is the ultimate trap, it’s something you carry with you for life; the people you come from and the marks they leave on you.” ⁣
⁣
I’ve had this book on my shelf for a while. I read the first chapter and loved it. I immediately told my husband to read it, so he did. Our audios got mixed so I just let him finish and never picked it up. I found my copy and remembered I never finished so I started it again in Kentucky. My husband shot up and immediately remembered it from the first sentence he heard. So needless to say, it’s a yes from the both of us 😂⁣
⁣
I didn’t really know where the story was going to go. 3 survivors of a neighborhood that is trapped in time and no one can enter, except them. It’s honestly more heartbreaking than horror. The flashbacks really got me. ⁣
⁣
For the audio, Jennifer Pickens is such a good reader. I think she does twists and paranormal reads so well. She has this voice of a “down on their luck” MC that no one will miss if they’re gone do something sinister happens voice. Very specific, I know. But that MC is perfect for her reading. I loved this audio. ⁣
⁣
It was such a quick read and I’m glad I grabbed it out the door to enjoy. Definitely pick up for complicated family drama with a dash or paranormal horror. ⁣
⁣
QOTD: What is your current read?

The first book in a while to really get my heart rate up while simultaneously giving me a literal paper cut because I was flipping the pages so fast😂😂😂!!!

The vivid imagery that @gwendolynkiste produces with her words, makes it a truly spooky Spooky Szn read!!!💀🖤👻 If you want a haunted house book but on a completely reimagined and fresh that’s on the shorter side, this one is for you!!!!


4.5⭐️

Thank you to @sagapressbooks #sagasayscrew for the review ARC and complementary final copy of this book!

Special thanks to author & @sagapressbooks #SagaSaysCrew for my gifted copy‼️

I wanted to like this one but it didn’t hit like I wanted. It had a dark gothic atmosphere with an authentic storyline but the delivery was mid. I also think part of my dislike began when I started listening to the audio.

The novel mainly follows Talitha Velkwood one of three survivors of the mysterious incident that caused an entire suburban block to disappear behind a near-impenetrable veil. The Velkwood Vicinity is what they call it and scientists can’t explain the strange phenomenon or why nobody can enter the area but the three survivors. On the night it occurred Talitha and her two bestfriends Brett and Grace escaped traumatized but unharmed. Now twenty years later Talitha is being paid to return and relive the memories and tragedy that stole the lives of her mother and sister.

Midway through the book the intensity declines and everything becomes a little predictable. I still don’t get why the area was named after Talitha’s family when there were two more survivors. Also reading this reminded me of the movie I Still See You where a disaster happens killing half of the city leaving behind remnants of their souls stuck in a time loop. I liked that the author provided backstory on a lot yet in the end I’m still lost on why the anomaly occurred. Another thing the author did well was seamlessly intertwining the past and present so readers have to decipher the dead from the living.

Overall, the book was okay but the characters in general were underdeveloped. The pacing was rather slow and I kind of wish they left the romance elements out because this is supposed to be horror right? Or maybe I missed something but if you enjoy ghost stories, psychological horror, or gothic fiction you might enjoy this book.

This was a fun horror read! Overall this book was really enjoyable and the characters were loveable and easy to root for and care for but for a lot of the book I wish we has gotten a bit more. More from the characters and the story. I also loved how spooky and atmospheric this book was!

Thank you to Saga Press an imprint of Simon & Schuster for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! 3.5 stars ⭐️
This book had one of the most original premises I’ve ever seen: an entire neighborhood disappears (Velkwood Street) where the people in it turn to ghosts. While I loved the premise, I think the author had a hard time establishing “rules” of how the characters could and couldn’t interact with the neighborhood. Things changed constantly because there wasn’t a way to keep it consistent. While the book was definitely creepy at times, it had the potential to be SO much scarier which feels like a missed opportunity to me. And none of the characters are particularly likable except Enid. I think my favorite thing about this book is that the author will drop a complete bombshell in the middle of a sentence that you never see coming. A couple times I had to re-read and audibly said, “WHAT?!”
It’s a pretty good read that I think will stay with me because I’ve never read another book that’s similar to it, and I’d be open to reading more of Kiste’s work.

The Haunting Of Velkwood
By: Gwendolyn Kiste

4 Stars

This book was genuinely spooky. I found myself with chills more than once while reading. A haunted house is one thing, but Talitha is facing her old home. The haunted Velkwood neighborhood. A place that holds memories and pain. It holds her family. It holds ghosts.


Wow. This story was deep and emotional. It was well written with interesting and intriguing characters. The Velkwood Vicinity is a place that holds darkness and secrets until the past is finally dealt with. You can't change the past, no matter how hard you try. This story was subtle with its romance, but the story was well done. It provided a spook while also providing an emotional read. It battled more than one tough topic, and each was done with class and imagination.



*I want to thank Netgalley and the author for this book in return for my honest review*

Stormi Ellis
Boundless Book Review

The Haunting of Velkwood was nothing like I expected, but in a good way. If you’re looking for a quick scare, look elsewhere, but if you’re wanting an exploration of family, loss, friendship, and sapphic relationships, you’ve come to the right place.

I really enjoyed what a unique story this was. I loved the idea of an entire neighborhood being “haunted.” I did feel that the back and forth in the middle got a little tedious, and I didn’t completely buy the relationship between Talitha and Brett, but, overall, I enjoyed this.

ARC received from Saga Press via Netgalley.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for this book I had a hard time jumping into it. I would rate this a 3/5 I think it was good but something I wouldn’t pick up again.

This is a unique story about a haunted neighborhood, with a gothic atmosphere and beautifully haunting writing. Talitha has lived with the trauma of a childhood shaped by a traumatic event: her entire neighborhood vanished behind a veil, leaving only three survivors—one of whom has ventured into it in the past 20 years—until now.

This was my first time reading a book by Kiste, and it certainly won’t be my last. Her storytelling is captivating, and I found myself drawn into the unsettling, paranormal elements of the plot without feeling anxious about gore (there wasn’t any!). I especially found Enid’s mysterious ability fascinating and would have loved to see it explored more deeply. The eerie tension and slow-burn horror make this an excellent read if you are just starting to explore this genre. Typically, after reading horror, I’d want to curl up and build a pillow fort at night, but this book was so beautifully written and compelling that I couldn’t help but love it.

Thank you Saga Press Books, the author, and NetGalley for gifting me this book!

Talitha the has been running away the past twenty years trying to escape the memories of losing her mother and little sister who just mysteriously vanished one night. Not only her family disappeared but the whole street of eight houses just incredibly disappeared leaving a misty haze which won't let anyone enter the Velkwood vicinity as the street has been named.

Occult investigators, science teams, FBI and anyone interested in creepy and unexplainable phenomenon have tried to investigate many times over the years with no luck but there seems to be an invisible barrier that pushes back when anyone has tried to enter the empty street. Another part of the story is why were the three best friends (Talitha, Brett, and Grace) spared who were all roommates at college. Investigators have tried many times to interview the girls (now women) over the years hoping to get them to enter Velkwood to see what might happen but the young women always refused until Grace, one day she went back, but that's another mystery to be told later.

What will be the repercussions of Talitha coming back to Velkwood and how could know that it's been waiting for not only herself but it wants Brett and Grace to come back as well! Are the answers the women are seeking worth walking into a true life episode 'Twilight Zone' which could evoke devastating events where there might not be any survivors left!


This was an entertaining and very different version of the usual haunted houses or places. The storyline was very eerie and spooky and I enjoyed the uniqueness of all the content. The book centers around Talitha and her emotional connection to the loss of her little sister and how she has been stuck inside a whirlpool of longing for the unattainable which has caused her more grief that has kept her from forming any real friends or relationships in the past twenty years. The book moves slowly at first but continues to build with unexpected turns which led to some very good last chapters. The supernatural elements were very good and I would recommend to any horror book reader!

I want to thank the publisher "Saga Press" and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this digital copy and any thoughts or opinions expressed are unbiased and mine alone!

I have given a rating of 3 1/2 EERILY HAUNTING 🌟🌟🌟🌠 STARS!!

This is one of the most unique ghost stories I’ve ever read. Usually, there are hauntings with a single ghost, at most a handful of them, but never before have I read anything where it’s an entire neighborhood, streets and structures included. This concept alone hooked me from the start and I was desperate to understand it more.

I enjoyed slowly getting to know each of the characters and feel like I connected with them as much as I needed to in order to appreciate this story. The connection could have been deeper, but it was enough. There is one character that is an integral part of the story that I think should have been featured more. I don’t think we had enough time with them or got enough of an explanation surrounding their particular situation.

A major theme of this story was, of course, grief and loss. Throughout the story, we see how it affects different individuals as well as their relationships to one another. While this story is very fantastical, the various depictions of grief felt very much rooted in the real world.

Mysterious, eerie, and atmospheric, this is one of the best and most unique ghost stories I’ve read in a while and I definitely recommend it!

I used to love The Twilight Zone. As I got older, however, I got tired of the hopelessness I felt watching even my favorite episodes. The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste felt like watching my favorite Twilight Zone episodes without the feeling of unresolvable dread. And I loved it.

The Haunting of Velkwood focuses around our narrator, Talitha Velkwood. Twenty years prior, the street she and her childhood friends grew up on disappeared behind a supernatural barrier, making the entire street unreachable and turning those living on it into ghosts. No one can enter the barrier except Talitha and her two friends, the three lone survivors of the event. Talitha has no interest in attempting to cross the barrier, until evidence comes back that her sister might still be alive.

This novel surprised me. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when faced with “living ghosts” or a street full of people hidden behind a barrier. But this did a wonderful job at seamlessly melding slow-moving action with character development. It not only explores what’s happening on Velkwood Street (What caused the barrier to appear? What does it do? How does it affect people?), but explores character and, through them, important topics. We get to know Talitha as she stops running from the ghosts of her past (literally and figuratively) and starts unraveling the events of the past as well as past trauma and guilt, all while trying to remedy what’s happened to her street and save those she loves.

This novel is a haunting exploration of grief, trauma, and the hold the past can have on a person. What I found most impressive was the exploration of the culpability of inaction—the impact it has and what it costs to those involved.

Overall, this novel does an amazing job of taking you through the journey of a woman who’s trying to hold on to those she loves (even if she can’t express that love) while dealing with strong emotions of grief and trauma and trying to fix a neighborhood that did little to protect her and her friends while growing up.

If you love stories that simultaneously feel dreamlike and firmly rooted in reality, that explore deep topics while delivering a fully fleshed out exploration of character and plot, give this a go. I’m so glad I read this, and the ending was so incredibly satisfying. A few content warnings: loss of loved ones, homophobia, sexual abuse (not on page), emotional abuse, medical tests.

Thank you to Saga Press and NetGalley for the digital review copy! All opinions are my own.

This is my first Gwendolyn Kiste novel. My overall thought is this is an ambitious novel. Instead of a haunted house, we get a haunted neighborhood. I love the premise.

The positive: From the start, I was hooked on the main character Talitha Velkwood and the overall atmosphere. Kiste really sets everything up nicely. The first half, really drew me in. The theme of the past trauma and having to face it in order to move on really resonated. Grief, family drama, love, the novel has it all.

The negative: The main character, Talitha Velkwood is really the only fully fleshed character. The novel is ambitious in concept, but doesn't quite deliver in answers. The ending was predictable with no real twist.

Overall: I was a little disappointed. I was loving the first half. The second half was just drawn out for a relatively short novel. For some readers they'll be wondering where's the horror. For me, I was good with the general horror atmosphere of the neighborhood and the trauma the three women experienced. I really like Kiste's writing, but felt the story may have been overly ambitious. I'm intrigued enough to read other Kiste novels. Hopefully one of them will hit it out of the park for me.

One of the my biggest pet peeves in the book world is when the blurb of the book *technically* matches the book but doesn’t really capture it—this is even more annoying to me when the blurb lets me down instead of the book surprising me.

The first offense comes in the header: *From Bram Stoker Award­–winning author Gwendolyn Kiste comes a chilling novel about three childhood friends who miraculously survive the night everyone in their suburban hometown turned into ghosts—perfect for fans of* Yellowjackets*.*

Besides the fact “everyone in the suburban hometown turned into ghosts” is not exactly accurate to what happens in the book, comparing this book to *Yellowjackets* is wildly inaccurate. Yes, this book is about 40-year-old women dealing with something that happened when they were 20—so that retrospective element is there—the style of horror of *The Haunting of Velkwood* is nothing like the horror of *Yellowjackets.* The goals of these two pieces of media are nothing alike; the characterization shares practically nothing. I have no idea who was in charge of that comparison, but it is wildly off-base.

Then we move into the inside flap copy itself: *The Velkwood Vicinity was the topic of occult theorists, tabloid one-hour documentaries, and even some pseudo-scientific investigations as the block of homes disappeared behind a near-impenetrable veil that only three survivors could enter—and only one has in the past twenty years, until now.*

The set-up of the story implies there will be a focus on the theorizing, etc. While there are scientists in the book who serve an important function (I actually quite liked them; I’ll come back to that), that’s far from the main point of the book itself. On a minor issue: “a near-impenetrable veil that only three survivors could enter” could be significantly better written to create the punch that these three women are the only ones who can enter.

The main character is then introduced: *Talitha Velkwood has avoided anything to do with the tragedy that took her mother and eight-year-old sister, drifting from one job to another, never settling anywhere or with anyone, feeling as trapped by her past as if she was still there in the small town she so desperately wanted to escape from.*

I noticed immediately that our main character is eponymous. I was expecting this to be significant—it was not. The only reason the neighborhood is called “Velkwood” is because the Velkwoods were the first family to buy a house on the street. That doesn’t even really make sense because usually there are names given by the developers to neighborhoods like that. More than that, if the author is going to link the place to the narrator/main character, I expect that to mean something.

I also want to note that the above quote is *a single sentence.* So much is packed into it that doesn’t give us anything about the story. Talitha’s listlessness is only partly relevant to her characterization (although her characterization is pretty lack-luster). We are told over and over that she’s not attached to anyone or anything, but then she is given a deep and emotional attention to her eight-year-old sister. So does she or does she not have serious attachments?

Let us continue: *When a new researcher tracks her down and offers to pay her to come back to enter the vicinity, Talitha claims she’s just doing it for the money. Of all the crackpot theories over the years, no one has discovered what happened the night Talitha, her estranged, former best friend Brett, and Grace, escaped their homes twenty years ago. Will she finally get the answers she’s been looking for all these years, or is this just another dead end?*

Here we are introduced to the other main characters: the new researchers, Jack, and the other two survivors: Brett and Grace. Grace as an entirely irrelevant character who added nothing to the story at all. There were multiple attempts to make her relevant to the story, but they never worked. I’m not even sure if she had potential to be a more interesting character, unlike Jack, who could’ve been more interesting. His family history tied him (indirectly) to the mystery of Velkwood. But the emotional impact of the relationship and the closure of what he’s looking for is just…nothing. It falls entirely flat.

Kiste tries to make the emotional core of the book to be the relationship between Talitha and her sister Sophie but Talitha and Brett ground the book. At the same time, Brett and Talitha are competing for emotional space. The book would be so much stronger if Brett’s family relationships were not part of it. I believe Kiste was trying to give both of them reasons to be fleeing the town, but the thing that unites them is motivation enough for both them. There didn’t need to be that added element. I’m trying to talk around it to avoid spoilers, but if you’ve read the book you know what I’m talking about.

Finally, I wanted this to lean more into being literary horror—to leave a lot of the mystery unsolved. But the second half of the book focused on explaining every piece of why and how this neighborhood turned into a ghost. The metaphor was powerful enough; I didn’t want a clear cut answers. I wanted to sit in the metaphor, to let it wash over me, and to explore the nooks and crannies of this neighborhood and how they shaped Brett and Talitha.

I found this book to just be a massive missed opportunity. There were so many places where this book could’ve succeeded and been really powerful. Like I said, the metaphor the book is working with was one I loved. But nothing was taken as far as I wanted and too much was shoved into a fairly small book, stymieing the book’s possibilities.

I received a digital version of this book for free from Saga Press as part of their Saga Says crew. Thank you so much for giving me the chance to read and review!

This was a decent read that’s heavily focused on the characters more so than the plot itself. While I enjoyed the two main characters I would’ve liked to have seen more insight into one of the minor characters, Enid, and her unusual abilities.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

The Velkwood Vicinity is a local phenomenon. A whole block of houses disappeared behind a veil that only three survivors can enter, and only one of them has in the past twenty years, until now.

Talitha Velkwood has avoided anything to do with the tragedy that took her mother, her sister and the whole neighborhood where she grew up. She's never settled on anything, moving through life just enough to survive but not truly living.

When a new researcher reaches out to her to go back in exchange for money, she agrees. Is she ready to face her past?

This was a fantastic, fun paranormal haunting book! A truly unique ghost story with classic Gothic elements. While there was also a romance subplot throughout the book, romance is not the focus. And also while its a horror, it does not have gore at all, just rather unsettling elements.

Honestly I think this might be a great horror book for people who are trying to get into the genre. I had a great time and was able to read this in one a day while working on my embroidery project.

If you are looking for a unique take on a ghost story, then check this one out

Typically, I read multiple books concurrently and hop between stories. That was not the case with 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘝𝘦𝘭𝘬𝘸𝘰𝘰𝘥. This book totally captivated me. Once I picked this up, it was hard to put down.

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘝𝘦𝘭𝘬𝘸𝘰𝘰𝘥 wasn’t at all what I was expecting for a ghost story. It wasn’t spooky or even suspenseful. But it was definitely speculative, which I loved!!

Wholly original and inspired, I haven’t read anything else quite like this book. I loved Kiste’s use of the paranormal to explore challenging themes around trauma, grief, and belonging.

I also really enjoyed the cinematic writing style. I would love to see this adapted for screen.

My rating: 4.25⭐️

This is a very unique spin on ghost stories and the way our past and childhood traumas can haunt us. I really enjoyed the supernatural event at the heart of the haunting and thought that this was an interesting take on how the ghosts inhabited not just a house but a whole neighborhood.

◇ Synopsis
The Velkwood Vicinity—a block of homes sealed behind an eerie, impenetrable veil—has drawn occult theories and media speculation for twenty years, with only three people ever escaping and one returning. Talitha Velkwood, haunted by the tragedy that claimed her mother and sister, has avoided her past until a researcher offers her money to reenter the vicinity. Reluctantly, she agrees, hoping to finally uncover what happened that night—or fearing it's just another dead end.
◇ Thoughts
The Haunting of Velkwood delivers an original, atmospheric horror story, drenched in a melancholic mood and dark paranormal energy. While the slow-burn sapphic romance and predictable characters may feel distant, the vivid scene-setting and haunting plot make it a compelling read. If you’re in the mood for an introspective, eerie slow-burn, this novel is worth a try. I found the sapphic slow romance an annoying distraction from the horror I was excited to read.