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.

I really can't say too much about this book without giving it away but just know that Gwendolyn Kiste will not let you down. Especially if you love a beautiful prose, an eerie (almost Silent Hillesque) landscape, and a place that stands still. When Kiste writes a book, I want to feel as if I'm there and get the whole ethereal experience.

3 girls (Talitha, Grace, and Brett) go to college and upon returning to their hometown, the street that they lived in becomes barricaded- for 20 years- along with their family members. No one knows how it happened and only the 3 girls can go inside of the barricade. Questions will be answered as to how this happened, and why. I was left feeling very emotional and wanted to ugly cry into my work bathroom after I finished it.

I did drop a star due to a relationship that I didn't feel grab me, and I wanted to know more about one of the main characters named Enid. There could be a whole book about her and I would read it in a heartbeat. May I suggest that, Gwendolyn, hint, hint 🤣

Thank you to NetGalley for sending me a free eread for an honest review. I really enjoyed this one from one of my favorite authors!

The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste is a pulse-pounding story that grips readers from the very first page.
I really enjoyed the writing style. I found myself gripped, turning the pages, not knowing what was to come next.
This story definitely had me interested from the beginning, but to get to the ending and the twist of it all. Amazing.

Thank You NetGalley and S&S/Saga Press for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

This. Was. Terrifying. Terrifying. And I loved every single second of it. Every one. I'm not someone who likes horror movies, but man do I enjoy reading them. This is a new top favorite for me, no question

This was honestly really boring. The overall idea was cool, but I literally could not bring myself to care about any of the characters or what was going on. This also wasn't scary, so it hardly felt like a horror book….

Tainted suburbia.

The Haunting of Velkwood is easily the most unique horror story I’ve read yet. You and your best friends head back to college in the dead of night at the week’s end, and by Monday, your entire childhood is gone in a shimmering blink. Your family, your home, your neighbors, the streets you used to roam, the trees you used to nap against. All a mirage.

I understand the pull of home. Even if there is darkness. Even if there is sadness, longing, mourning. Home makes you who you are. I still roam the same cracked sidewalks that raised me as a child to this day, but with my own children. They play on the park I would camp out on late at night, watching the stars and meteors. There is something masochistic about haunting the place you used to live, unable to fully return, a piece of you still residing in those walls.

This book resonated with me. It was well paced, well plotted, deep and meaningful. I loved it. Saga Press really knows how to pick em.

The Haunting of Velkwood was a delightful and dark read. This novel was atmospheric, dealing with themes of grief, love, trauma, bystanders. I downloaded this to read a bit on a plane ride and didn't even notice when we took off, that's how involved I was in this story. Gwendolyn Kiste paints a gripping world and detailed characters, I devoured this entire book before we landed. This is the story how 4 girls changed a neighbor into ghosts, how 3 escaped but never left, and how the ghosts in our lives can push us to the future or keep us in the past. The only downside of this novel was I kept forgetting the MCs were in their 40s, it felt very much like a group of teenagers. I don't think this is bad, exactly, but when it was mentioned it jarred me a bit. Overall, i really loved this story. Kiste wrote a powerful novel that will stay with me for a while.

A haunted neighborhood and a secret among friends are intertwined in this unusual take on haunting. This was a quick read that kept me interested till the end.