What I appreciate about Kerry Hadley-Price’s new novel, Lie of the Land, is that it is reminiscent of films like Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961) or Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others (2001), in that with the strategic additions of a dilapidated, old house and oddly disturbing children, one has the formula for a pretty successful and creepy Gothic thriller. Jemma and Rory, the protagonists, are a couple who decides to buy a home together in the Black Country, located in the Midlands, United Kingdom; a place that got its name “due to the smoke from many thousands of ironworking foundries and forges plus also the working of the shallow and 30ft thick coal seams” (from the BBC website). Readers immediately get the sense this was a reluctant purchase on Jemma’s part, but Rory seems blissfully oblivious to Jemma’s angst (the work is told from a detached Jemma’s standpoint, which adds more of a confessional and removed quality to the text).

The full review will be coming out later today, 1/21/2025 at https://greatbutunknownperformances.wordpress.com/.

ADVANCED REVIEW COPY

Kerry Hadley-Price is a new author to me, though this is her fourth novel published by Salt Publishing...I'm left wondering if they're all as dry as this offering.

The book has elements of Urban Horror, young couple buy a "do-er upper", house has a history of failures and an inexplicable malignancy, freaky neighbours with hidden issues...then a tragic event occurs which takes us on a head scratching
journey - but no spoilers...not my style

Most of what I wrote above you can get from the cover and the advertising blurb - or from reviews that serve to repeat such information...

What was a spoiler for me is the strange narrative style that I assume Ms Hadley-Price experiments with here...page after page of "Jemma will tell how..." or "Jemma will say..." or "She'll tell..." or "she'll say"...over time it
becomes galling and takes something from my enjoyment of the storytelling...there are long paragraphs placed throughout the book, whole pages where there are no indents , no line breaks...long consecutive sentences full of the "will tell/say..." nonsense...they
cried out to be skim read and most of the time I obliged as half way through the book I was begging for it to stop...

...and eventually it does stop and Vince will say what was that all about, where did it go, why did we go there...Vince will tell how he feels robbed of four days of his reading life that he can never get back...Vince will not be rereading
this book as it offered him nothing.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Jemma and Rory are in a fairly new relationship when they buy a place that needs a lot of work. A creepy domestic thriller that once you get passed the writing style is gripping and well written. I enjoyed this book a lot. Thanks to Salt publishing and Netgalley for this review ARC.

This literary thriller by Kerry Hadley-Pryce from a small publishing house (Salt Publishing) is a curious one. Set in the Black Country in England (an area in the West Midlands), it’s creepy and atmospheric, with some good descriptive writing, but ultimately the story peters out and goes nowhere.

Rory and Jemma meet in drunken circumstances and seemingly against Jemma’s better judgment she becomes involved in a serious relationship with Rory and they buy a dilapidated house as a doer-upper. From the get go, it’s apparent that the house is strange, with dead animals appearing in the garden and oddly intense neighbours Ed and Catherine next door.

The book has a strange narrative style in the sense that the story is written from the retrospective perspective of someone observing Jemma. I didn’t mind this too much as it added to the sinister atmosphere, but ultimately the characters remained unknowable and the mysteries at the heart of the story unsolved.

I’m not the sort of reader who needs everything tied up in a neat bow but I’m not sure what the author was trying to do here. Nothing is ever explained and every loose thread is left hanging. Portray a woman having a nervous breakdown, buckling under the pressure of a relationship she doesn’t want to be in perhaps? A just ok 2.5 stars rounded up for some decent writing. 3/5⭐️

Many thanks to Salt Publishing for the arc via @netgalley. As always, an honest review.

Every now and again, a book captures my attention like a fish hook and I'm painfully pulled into the murky tale, unable to escape. Lie of the Land is one of these. A dark and unsettling story, a bit weird and eerily brilliant.

A young woman family lawyer meets a man with the intention of a brief affair - he is engaged after all. But this quickly becomes something else as they commit to buying an old dilapidated Victorian house with the intention of doing it up and selling it in order to make a profit. They make friends with their next-door neighbours who have two daughters.

The story opens with the main character describing the big oak tree that blocks out the light in the garden, and the birds she believes are nesting in it. These are things she refers to throughout: the oppressive tree and the house, the birds symbolic of freedom and the tenuous link between life and death. She finds herself strangely trapped like a bird caught in the attic. Although she is a successful professional she remains caught in a relationship she doesn't care for in a house she doesn't like.

The writing style is unusual but suits the tone of uncertainty and suggests, perhaps, the mindset of someone in the legal profession. From the lawyer's perspective in the third person, everything is expressed in a future tense, not always clearly and with a fair amount of ambiguity that leaves everything open. Excellent writing.

However, the real main character is the landscape. Set in the Black Country, an area undefined in the the English Midlands, there is a hint of crime and unsafe areas such as the canal. There is a gothic atmosphere highlighted by the tall buildings, cold weather and sunless rooms - even the girl next-door dresses as a 'Goth'. This is a story of stagnation and continuity, from the ancient oak and rituals of birds, to rocks and fossils. If someone wasn't of the Black Country to start with, they would change to become part of that land.

A clever, psychologically disturbing and an original book.

I really like the description for this book, but was disappointed in the book. The writing style was strange, full of ‘she will say’ which I found difficult. The actual story started ok but soon drifted with disjointed snippets that I couldn’t first into a timeline.
The book ends without any resolution to the few strands that I couldn’t first into pick out.
I want to give it 2.5 but have rounded up to 3.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

You know right from the start that things aren't going to end well in this book. Jemma is a family lawyer who has just won a case in a slightly dodgy way, gaining custody for the father for no better reason than she has to win. That night, she meets Rory, a formless kind of guy with whom she slides into a relationship in spite of herself. The language is slippery, the narrator telling. us how Jemma would be laying out the case of what has happened, if she had the opportunity. The world of the characters is gloomy and claustrophobic, and there's a weighty inevitability to their journey. It's beautifully written, the tension maintained almost unbearably throughout. Not a fun read, but an effective one nonetheless.

Jemma isn't sure that she wants to be with Rory, let alone be buying a dilapidated ruin of a house deep in the Black Country with him. Reluctantly, she moves into The Rocks, but immediately feels something off about the house - and about their new neighbours.

It is important to remember when reading Kerry Hadley-Pryce's Lie of the Land that it is a literary thriller rather than a no-frills thriller. If you come to this book expecting breakneck twists and turns, red herrings, cliffhanger chapter endings (in fact, any chapters at all!) and a tidy resolution, then you will likely be disappointed. Lie of the Land is a novel which prioritises atmosphere and characterisation over plot, and, for me, it does so very successfully.

From the opening words of the book, Hadley-Pryce crafts an oppressive atmosphere which becomes more and more stifling as the tension builds and we delve deeper into Jemma's troubled psyche. The characters feel unlikeable and unsettling, even when they ostensibly attempting to be loving or friendly. Even Jemma, our protagonist, feels suspect thanks to a unique narrative voice which relays her story as if she were recalling it to a police officer: 'It was cold that day, Jemma would tell.'

I was a little disappointed that several important questions remained unanswered at the novel's conclusion, but then again, that wasn't really the author's point so it feels somewhat churlish to be frustrated. Perhaps the main question we should be asking is this: how much of what happens in the book really happened, and how much of it is in Jemma's mind? The descriptions of both characters and settings - most notably the house and the nearby canal - are so eerie and laden with portent that they alone kept me gripped; Hadley-Pryce takes Stephen King's concept of slippage and uses it to embue the area of the West Midlands known as the Black Country with a quiet menace.

Thank you to NetGalley and Salt Publishing for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really didn’t like this book and unusually for me DNF and gave up at 55% even though this was a short book. The writing style is silly and pretentious yet drivels on without any plot or character development. The characters are unlikeable and I didn’t have any interest in the outcome which is why I DNF for the first time this year.

I thought the story idea was solid and loved the setting but the writing was a little odd. It almost trailed off at times. It was written it an odd style where sentences would be set up like "Jemma would say..." vs just writing what she would say or think. It was almost like reading a report of some kind at times. The book was really just vibes and I didn't feel like that worked well for this type of book where you do want some sort of details.

A depressing domestic thriller, Lie of the Land is narrated by Jemma who introduces her thoughts with “she’ll say.” And why? Is she arrested, on trial or are these the symptoms of a broken mind? It could be because Jemma’s life is overflowing with problems. On a whim, she has partnered with Rory who was and now is not engaged to Sophie. An accident involving Sophie which may or may not have been provoked by Jemma causes her to leave her job and help Rory with the run down house they have impulsively bought. What follows is either a descent into madness, a haunting, a murder or something else which we may never understand.

The unknown is the strength of Lie of the Land. Is it a mystery, a psychological thriller or a horror story? The location in England’s Black Country is both bleak and atmospheric. The characters confuse and change as Jemma describes them. I’m not sure what I just read but its pull was so strong that I cant stop thinking about it. 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Salt Publishing and Kerry Hadley-Pryce for this ARC.

Lie of the Land was a really interesting concept for a book, and one that I had high hopes for. Set in the Black Country (and as someone who has many roots in the Black Country, this was really cool) it really managed to capture the desolate nature that is prevalent in some parts of this area. I found the story gripping, and at times genuinely really unnerving and creepy. I love stories with an unreliable narrator, and I definitely didn't know who to trust in this book, they all seem like terrible people.
I appreciate what the author was trying to do with the narrative style, although I admit it felt jarring as a reader at times every time a sentence opened with "she'll say...". It made the unreliable concept feel a little too heavy handed for my personal taste.
I am also disappointed with the ending of this book, as it just seemed to end rather abruptly with no questions answered. Was it all in her head? Was any of it real? Did someone actually die? I don't mind loose endings, especially with creepy books, but I wanted something to at least have a resolution, rather than everything just falling flat.

Overall this book was honestly one of the creepiest I've read, but I just wanted a little bit more resolution and the narrative style just didn't quite hit the tone with me. Rated 2.5 stars (rounded up to 3)

Really, really didn't like this one at all. The writing was awkward and disjointed. There wasn't a single character who wasn't an asshole. And I'm not sure what was happening to be honest.

I hated the whole "she'd say", or "she'd tell you" way of writing. And the sentences were so so meandering. "She'll tell how, yes, it was freezing, the air was, and it was quiet, and there was an odd feeling there, as if where she stood had been transplanted there, into that place from another time, and she'll say she had a sudden urge to be the same as all the rest of them, to get rid of the weeds and mess, to renovate this place, live the suburban life, and just...be the same, settle down."
THAT IS ONE SENTENCE, and it doesn't really have a point.

The saving grace was that at least it was short, and I was able to read it in one sitting, because I don't think I would have come back to it if I'd put it down.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC, but this one wasn't for me.

Hauntingly beautiful, mesmerizing, harrowing and poetic. This is undoubtedly one of my favorite reads this year!

Where the storyline is relatively simple (young couple buys a fixer-upper that turns out to be a money pit), the undercurrents that flow through the book is pulling the reader in different directions. Is it the buildup to domestic abuse? Is it about a young woman who is slowly descending into madness? Are the neighbors just plain sociopaths, or is her husband a murderer? There are many interpretation possible, and none lead to the seemingly happy ending that is proposed by the author. What really happend is left to the imagination of the reader, and I must have a twisted mind, because I've rarely felt so uneasy and fearful by a fictional story. At a certain moment (right after the "accident"), I even had to stop reading to collect my thoughts, but I was strangely pulled back to the unusual, addictive prose.

And talking about the prose: yes it is unusual. The way we read Jemma's thoughts can feel irritating at first, but I quickly got used to it and it absolutely adds another layer of strangeness to this already nightmarish narrative. And at the same time it is poetic, lyrical, just perfect to render the bleak atmosphere of the Black Country setting and the uncanny cast of characters.

I can only strongly recommend this book, which is an absolute gem. Bravo !

My heartfelt thanks to NetGalley, Salt Publishing and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Lie of the Land.

Lie of the Land.

I've got to be perfectly honest here; I'm not exactly sure about what I've just read. This book is like the literary equivalent of 'no thoughts just vibes', and didn't really give me the mysterious thriller I was hoping for...more like a constant feeling of 'eh?!' with barely any clue on what was going on from page to page.

The narration style and lack of chapters being properly laid out didn't do it for me, and any hope of tension being built simply didn't happen. It felt dirgy, like wading through treacle, and barely anything of note occurred. Then when things did occur it was so outlandish and not fitting with the tone of the book it was what I imagine a psychotic break feels like. Perhaps that's actually the point of the book and I've accidentally experienced it as intended.

I'm usually quite good at suspending disbelief with fictional novels, but Lie of the Land felt like when you're being talked at by your least favourite co-worker and it all merges into a drone you're not interested in. Sure you'll pick up some details, but do you care about them? No. Do you want to keep listening? No.

Thankfully it was quite a short read, so there's a plus point. Definitely not one for me, and I'm not sure who the target audience would even be for this. Just an utterly bizarre reading experience being on the receiving end of a boring stranger's stream of consciousness.

A couple, Rory and Jemma, have bought ‘The Rocks’, a dilapidated, almost derelict house. Rory is very enthusiastic and can see real potential and money to be made from it once it’s fixed up. Jemma, however, is less convinced, both about the house and their relationship but she goes along with it.
They met at a club and he told her that it was ‘already taken’. Rory had a fiancée called Sophie and she tried to warn Jemma off. But now that she’s got him as she likes a challenge, she isn’t so keen and has a
‘terrifying vision of him and her still together in five, ten, twenty years time.’
But she also sees the house as a chance to make some real money. However, the house has cold spots, an unpredictable boiler and a strong smell of damp. They meet their neighbours, Ed and Cath, and on returning home, a door slams and a voice says
‘you shouldn’t be here.’
and then Jemma finds a young girl in the back garden on a cold night…
‘The Lie of the Land’ is written as if someone’s telling you the story in an almost aggressive, confrontational tone was as in ‘she’ll tell you’ or ‘she’ll say’ which took a bit of getting used to.
Neither Rory nor Jemma were particularly likeable characters and it was hard to feel sympathetic towards them. The business with the child was never resolved properly and the supernatural element seemed to just fade away.
In some ways it was a strange novel as there were several elements in it, none of which came together; supernatural overtones, crime, toxic relationships and a hint of ‘The Stepford Wives’ which didn’t entirely work as a whole. What was the point of Sophie? Why does Rory kill the bird in the loft?
At the end, Rory and Jemma were trapped; by the house, by the neighbours and their own choices and inertia.
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.

I've got to be honest, I'm not even sure what I've just read. The story seems to follow a couple - Rory and Jemma - who had a one night stand following which they end up in a relationship destroying the life of Rory's fiancee.

I think the tone of the book was supposed to be one of tension ramping up but it simply felt bleak throughout and didnt really go anywhere.

However it was the style that I found most irritating. I hoped that the "Jemma would say..." "Jemma would tell you ..." way the majority of the sentences began would fizzle out but it continues throughout the book. It is almost as if someone is writing a secondhand report for a criminal case. Whatever it was supposed to be simply annoyed me. It wrecked any kind of fluidity of the narrative. It jarred my reading experience and I almost quit reading several times.

I gave it 2 stars because I finished it, the story could have been interesting had it actually gone anywhere but it ultimately gave me a headache. Not for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and Salt Publishing for the advance review copy.

I really didn't enjoy this book. A young couple buy a house that needs a lot of work. Strange things start to happen, which are never explained and the ending gives no closure at all to the story. Plus, I found the characters were not very likeable.
Thanks to NetGalley for a preview copy.
Copied to Goodreads.

Thanks for allowing me to read this Net Galley
Unfortunately I really struggled with this book.
I tried so hard to understand the authors narrative but there was just a repetitive narrative of a particular word that just was not working for me and I found it so off putting to then get into the story.
It gave creepy elements but was a slow burn

You can feel the darkness of Lie of the Land by Kerry Hadley-Price coming off the page. Jemma and Rory have just moved into a new home somewhere in the Black Country. It needs work - a lot of work. Their relationship seems a little fragile, and everything is very slightly off kilter.

We begin to understand that there is tragedy in Jemma's life, although exactly what has happened only reveals itself slowly.

Then they meet the neighbours and things become even stranger. Next door's house is lovely, and its occupants just a little too much. Meanwhile despite working on their own house, nothing really seems to improve. The cold and wet seep in. And the couple's relationship isn't a great deal better.

Then something happens, and you're hit sideways.

This is a dark and brooding book, best read in those short days and long nights of winter. It's unsettling and very original. I liked it.