Sophie Wickham is a 32-year-old living a hedonistic and directionless life in London. While all of her friends have moved onto families, careers and new countries, Sophie still finds herself working temp jobs, spending too much money on material things, and drinking too much. Soon after starting her latest job, she begins to receive threatening packages and messages warning her of some kind of danger, until one day she stumbles out of the woods and into the village of Withered Hill, with no recollection of how she came to be there, or who, exactly she is.

Withered Hill is an almost perfect folk horror novel in my opinion. All of the classic elements of the subgenre are here, with an isolated village, pagan traditions and beliefs, insular villagers who speak in cryptic riddles, and plenty and plenty of ritualistic festivals. There are some pretty unsettling scenes in this book, and despite the villagers apparent kindness to Sophie, the reader is left to wonder right along with her what exactly her ultimate purpose will be in Withered Hill, a town from which she cannot escape.

The story is told in two separate timelines, "Outside," which describes Sophie's life before WIthered Hill, and "Inside" the village. The "Inside" timeline jumps around and does not unfold linearly. At first this seemed a little gimmicky to me, but the author manages to pull it off in such a way that it adds to the foreboding and mystery (although there is a scene where a character appears who was supposed to have died earlier in the story).

The writing is really impressive and I was pulled in right away. At a certain point in the book, I came across such a gorgeously rendered passage that takes place when Sophie ventures into the woods on the night of Samhain that I immediately put down my e-reader and pre-ordered the physical book.

Withered Hill enraptured and chilled and delighted me and included all of the elements I love most in folk horror. The ending didn't quite land as satisfyingly as I had hoped, the resolution left me with some questions, and there was a major subplot that I found sort of unnecessary, but this is still a five star read and goes among the top of the list of my favorite books in this sub-genre.

Thank you to NetGalley and Canelo for a digital advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. Withered Hill will be published on September 26, 2024.

**4.5**
I really enjoyed this book! In the beginning I was a little lost and confused thinking I might have missed something but slowly, as the story starts to come together and it’s nothing like I thought it would be. At no point (maybe by like 75%ish) did I know where the story was truly going to go and even then I started piecing things together - or at least thought I was - there were more twists I didn’t expect. I really loved the way everything gets tied together in the end.

Wow, what a book! I requested this ARC because I was craving some horror and a chance to delve into my beloved Lancashire.

While it took me a long time to get into this, I loved how it all came together towards the end. This is not at all the genre I usually go for, but I loved the nod to grim fairytales and grew to appreciate the moral to the story, so to speak.

An excellent book by a new to me author.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC

someone call a24 !!

On the outside, Sophie Wickham’s friends are getting married, having babies, and moving away, all while thirty-two-year-old Sophie is single, in debt, drinking too much, working a temp job, and unable to find any semblance of happiness in her life. She feels lost and alone.

On the inside, Sophie wakes up to a new world, a village known as Withered Hill; naked, covered in scratches, caked with dirt and mud, and no recollection of how she got there. She spends her days planning (and attempting) her escape from the peculiar citizens and their constant, unnerving festivals.

This book emanates dread and fills readers with a strong sense of unease right from the beginning. Take for example this excerpt at only 5% in:
”The man pulls out a… mask? No, a pig’s head. Hollowed out, pink and leathery. He puts it on top of his own head, as though it is a hat, then pushes it down until it covers his face. His wife does the same with another from the bag. Then they both help the child with her own. The three of them stand and stare at her, a family of pig-faced people.” If I were Sophie, I would immediately be thinking ‘GET ME OUTTA HERE’

The story moves between what appears to be past and present timelines but in this case, it is presented as Outside [of Withered Hill] and Inside. So much of the origin behind the village of Withered Hill is unknown to readers and is slowly offered up in tiny morsels as the story moves along. It’s that not knowing and the absolute strangeness of the town, its people, and its rituals that had me moving along at a breakneck pace to figure out what the hell was going on. It was an utterly intoxicating and tantalizing journey. There are sexual undertones present but nothing so blatantly vivid or descriptive as to be off-putting.

Read if you enjoy unsettling and bizarre stories, folklore and fairytales, and stories that have a taste of <I>The Lottery</i>.

Thank you Canelo and NetGalley for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review! Available 09/26/2024! *Quotes are pulled from an advanced reader copy and are subject to change prior to publication*

Thank You to NetGalley for the chance to read Withered Hill

I very much enjoyed and was taken in by Sophie from page one. This book is a folk horror. I found the ending to be creepy and enthralling. This was a great concept a story.

Great dalogue and prose.

There is a sense of morality in this story. In the way that, it explores how human beings justify their unsavory actions by saying" there are worse people. I'm not that bad."

An unsettling story. I recommend.

This is an excellent folk horror novel with strong supernatural elements that will definitely have you questioning everything by the end.

Sophie wakes up in the woods naked with no memory of who she is. When she walks to the titular small town, it appears that they've been expecting her. But she's not a prisoner. She can't leave though. In fact, the town folks treat her like a star. There's something she must do before she can leave, although nobody will tell her exactly what that is.

We get to go back and forth between her time in the town and her life before. We'll be able to see what led up to her being there and the horrifying thing she must do in order to leave.

The twisty narrative is fantastic. I was never completely sure of what was going on but, as it plays out, some hair raising revelations are going to be made. And the ending will put you on edge with it's implications!

This novel sucked me in from the beginning and I highly recommend it.

I would like to thank Net Galley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Contains minor spoilers.

I was really excited at the beginning and I have to say I really loved the ending. But the middle part felt a bit repetitive at times. There were also small things like <spoiler>she was angry at her friends for having serious relationships back to back, but the relationship with Jamie would have been around the same time of those relationships</spoiler>.

If not for the ending, it would have been a 3 stars read.

Conceptually, this is a unique premise. The lore and nods to paganism throughout the book were well done and, despite, the creative (and at times confusing) structure of the timelines, the mystery was compelling enough to propel me onwards when reading.

I was disappointed that I didn’t get an autumnal or spooky vibe when I was reading. When Sophie is abducted and magically confined to a community, I was expecting the creepiness to ramp up, but she was remarkably blasé about it and instead of atmosphere, we got heavy emphasis on sex and humanizing the creepy community… which sucked any spookiness out. It was disappointing because it could’ve been oozing with atmosphere and tension… but just wasn’t. Sophie wasn’t an interesting character to me: an alcoholic that’s largely a passenger for everything that happens to her, her character felt disempowered. She doesn’t show any fight, spunk, or curiosity even amid some pretty bonkers scenarios. Because she was so boring, her backstory wasn’t compelling to me and I felt the pacing of the story was adversely impacted since equal weight was given to Sophie’s current existence, backstory, and time in Withered Hill. While some of it was important for narrative purposes, much of it wasn’t and made the flow feel disjointed.

While the story is certainly a unique take on the genre, I’m not sure the structure doesn’t get in the way a bit. The ending was unique but because it was telegraphed repeatedly throughout the story, it didn’t blow my mind but kinda just confirmed what I suspected and that was that.

There’s a strange r/menwritingwomen undercurrent where the women are sexualized and/or male-gaze stereotypical with an uncomfortable misogynistic vibe that’s story-spanning. There’s also a distracting overuse of the word “lovely” that was so non-descriptive, it started to drive me nuts!

Ultimately, I’m glad I gave this a go. It’s probably one that hits differently on a re-read!

I was privileged to have my request to read this book accepted through NetGalley. Thank you, Canelo!

It was an okay book but felt a little underdeveloped for me. I loved the premise but couldn't really attach myself to the story and characters. The prose was well written. 3 stars.