The Farmhouse was a DNF for me. I really wanted to enjoy it but what I read left me confused and wondering what was happening.

Chelsea Conradt’s The Farmhouse is a gripping thriller that masterfully combines a secluded setting with relentless, nerve-wracking action. The story follows Emily, who seeks a fresh start in a farmhouse, only to find her sanctuary unraveling as inexplicable events unfold—like the barn seemingly shifting locations. Conradt’s storytelling keeps readers on edge, delivering unexpected twists that make this novel hard to put down. As author Kate Wiley notes, it’s “a triumphantly creepy novel that you’ll want to keep in your freezer when you go to sleep.”

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy of this compelling book.

I found this to be a little slow moving.

If you keep with it, there's definitely some payoff in the end and a mostly satisfying conclusion.

Had the book been tightened a bit, I would have found it a bit eerier. My issue was that the eerie bits kept getting interrupted by running updates (like physically running) and the RELATIONSHIP. I hated the RELATIONSHIP and the way that issue resolved was like a weird throwaway.

The book has potential and the eerie bits prove that the author can write. I just needed something with a little more movement (except the running - that was a lot).

For a fraidy cat like me, this book was definitely one that kept me up at night! In fact, towards the end I stopped reading it at night because I was freaking myself out too much. This author is great at setting a mood and creating a creep atmosphere. I enjoyed the main character's quirky personality and the ways in which we got to see her processing the loss of her mother.

This was just okay! A decent debut but not a standout for me. I know book marketing isn't generally in the author's control, but this is not a thriller. It's much too slow and internal. Psychological suspense? Psychological horror? Great. But thriller it is not, and that expectation I had was not met and therefore this wasn't the best reading experience! But if you know that going in, it could work for you.

This was a mixed bag for me. It is a thriller with a lot of good potential but I think it was more focused on the imagery and vibes than the strongest plot. It's not a bad read at all and I had a good time, but there were missed opportunities to offer more suspense or character development that I feel like were missed and then a lot was pushed and rushed at the end. I think the ending itself was pretty satisfying though.

Unfortunately this is just a no for me. I don't really have many notes... I'm genuinely confused at what this was supposed to be as far as the plot and storyline.

Thank you for the ARC copy of this book!

I really enjoyed this book and read it in a day. I couldn't wait to get to the end to find out what happened!

I would have liked a little bit more information on what happened to the main character at the end!

The storyline grabbed my attention straight away. I thought it was a book completely up my street. However it did fall a little flat for me part way through. It is an atmospheric thriller and i really enjoyed that about it, it felt very eerie at parts and i loved that. Emilys character was very well written but i just felt as the book neared the end the story was a bit rushed, more detail could have been added. All in all a good thriller 3🌟
📚I was able to read an advanced copy of title thanks to NetGalley, Chelsea Conradt and Poisoned Pen Press📚
📚All reviews and opinions are entirely my own📚

The farmhouse started out string, but felt the ending was a little rushed. Overall, it has a creepy paranormal vibe, which i enjoyed.
I loved Emily's character in the defining. She was funny, playful, and humorous. She looses it quickly as the book progresses. Kinda wish she would have ke0t some of her original characteristics.

I DNF'd. The premise looks great and I love the cover art as well.
This is absolutely within my favourite genre and generally seemed like something I'd enjoy.

However I found the writing very clunky. The timeline seemed to skip forward months or weeks for no apparent reason but the FMCs mood and anxieties would stay relatively the same, like it being weeks later didn't clear the air or add to the tension in any way.

The relationship between Josh and Emily seemed off. There were random times they were horny as hell for each other for no real reason, we are repeatedly told about them christening the bed and the rooms of the house (as far as I got this isn't spicy though). It doesn't add to the story.
Then things would get suddenly tense over really silly little things. Or one time josh answered "fine" which caused problems for Emily "as it always did" things like this happen multiple times but we, the reader, are not given any indication that there are or have been any issues in the marriage- quite the opposite. So why the huge tension between them over innocuous things?
Why is josh so pressed about non specific teasing from workmates ostensibly solely for moving to a farm (that teasing makes no sense either, to me).
The couple just seem really hot and cold on each other at random.

Emily repeatedly makes choices that make zero sense. There's also the sudden "sea sickness" caused apparently by Nebraska being flat? Compared to SF which isn't. She even throws up because of it. As someone in SF that is from a flat place originally I couldn't suspend my belief for this one.

Emily lives on a farm, rents the land back to the farmers. Even months in to living there and working from home she doesn't meet any of them. This leads to her hiding in a cornfield when she hears two of them nearby, rather than running past them.

Almost every page something pulled me completely out of the story. I DNF'd and I'm sad about it because I wanted to love this but horror like this requires atmosphere to work and if I couldn't get two pages without going "wait, what?" And having to flip back then it wasn't going to work for me. YMMV.

After Emily's mom passes away, she and Josh move to a farm in Nebraska for a fresh start. It seems like they were embarking on the life they dreamed of together. But, something is just not quite right with the barn - it appears to move. It holds secrets. It's dangerous. Emily knows this, tells Josh but he doesn't believe her. He blames her grieving the loss of her mother and insomnia. He ignores it until he just can't anymore and FINALLY sees that Emily's right. But is it too late?

I honestly don’t know what I just read. The story line was great. It grabbed me, The book’s name and the cover of the book. I was so excited to read this but it fell so flat for me.
I didn’t understand why the barn was part of the story all it ever told us was there was lights ,music and the distance from the house to the barn would change. Honestly that was really annoying.
Is the story about a haunted barn or a ghost story, I don’t know. So when it revealed everything about why the barn moved I rolled my eyes.
There were also questions unanswered. Like the hair clip it was mentioned twice and then nothing ever became of it. Then the disappearance of a teenager was mentioned then nothing was said about her till the end. Also why did the boys keep killing other women after they killed Bridget and what really happened to Alice?
The Ending was the best part! Good riddance to Josh! He mad me so mad!

Emily and Josh have moved to a farm in Nebraska. They are eager to start a new life. Emily’s mother died and she needs to escape the memories San Francisco holds. They have bought a house and are renting the land surrounding it to a farmer. It is about as different as anyone’s life could become, and yet there is an old barn on the farm that affects Emily in strange ways.
Emily sees and hears things that Josh swears he is not experiencing. She feels the love for her husband slipping out of her grasp, as he constantly doubts her. He blames her concerns on lingering grief, and his often repeated suggestion is that Emily needs rest.
I’m not going to delvedeeply into what happens since spoilers lurk around every corner of this farm. I did want to yell at both Emily and Josh quite a few times. Josh for being so unsupportive, and Emily, well for making decisions that just didn’t make sense to me. I was convinced I knew how this would end. Imagine my surprise when I was correct about one aspect and totally wrong on another.

Is Emily seeing ghosts? Is she slowly losing her mind? Maybe less coffee and more sleep might help? Emily's dream house proves a bit more isolating than expected, with memories of her dead mother and other women, also dead - no wait, was that a fox? And why won't anyone believe her? The book will keep you up, just to see how close the barn gets...

This is definitely a creepy and atmospheric thriller, but it is slow moving. For me the haunted house stuff never works and it didn't do it for me in this one either, I had no idea that would be a part of the novel. It was very predictable and I felt it used a lot of what we see in other thrillers.

The Farmhouse is a mixed bag of a book, but you can’t deny that it evokes plenty of emotions.

The Farmhouse follows Josh and Emily Hauk as they embark on their new life in rural Nebraska. Emily’s mother has recently passed and the memories of her still haunt Emily. But the memory of her mother isn’t the only thing keeping Emily up at night. The newest resident of the old Belkin farm also sees the barn move, hears screams from the cornfields at night, and eventually faces the ghost of the late Alice Belkin herself. In order to settle into her home, Emily must first lay to rest the ghosts of the past.

This book read a lot like a classic 70s horror to me, something along the lines of Burnt Offerings or The Auctioneer. I can’t really put my finger on exactly why that is, but something about Chelsea Conradt’s voice and the style of the writing just really harkens back to those classic novels. And this one is packed full of all those classic tropes. Spooky house, strange neighbors, and a completely oblivious husband. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and setting.

The Farmhouse definitely has all the supernatural elements of a spooky ghost story, but if you’re not really into the supernatural, but like a good malevolent atmosphere, I think this one could still be for you. While the ghosts are a central feature, I found the more tangible aspects of Emily’s sleuthing to be more compelling.

I also found all of the characters rather compelling. One of the main things I remember from my master’s program was a professor telling us that we needed our characters to make mistakes. Perfect people didn’t exist, so perfect characters can’t either. And, oh, boy, does Emily make mistakes (and Josh, too, but I’ll get to him in a minute). The actions Emily takes gives her a feeling of reality. I understand why she does what she does even when it made me frustrated or annoyed. And while I’ve seen in other reviews that people don’t like the disbelieving husband trope (and Josh could be the poster boy), I totally get why he makes the decisions he does too. I don’t blame the decisions that either of the Hauk’s make even when it made me rage against either of them. They’re very real characters; if you've read any of my other reviews, this is very important to me.

That said, at some points, Emily is almost too real. Instead of seeing her thoughts, I feel like I’m reading someone’s journal, someone who spends their life chronically online. This eased off as the book progressed, but there were so many statements in the first half of the book that completely threw me out of the writing. I viscerally remember tl:dr being written unironically in the middle of Emily’s thoughts. There’s lots of these moments, and they felt incredibly awkward coupled with Conradt’s otherwise lovely writing.

I think this book could have also benefited from someone reading over it to comb out all of the loose threads. Conradt has left so many, so many little moments that just don’t make sense. This book just requires a bit too much of the suspension of disbelief for me to be entirely satisfied with the ending.

Overall, this isn’t a bad book. It grew on me like the house grew on Emily. Conradt writes an interesting story, and I would definitely be open to picking up a book by her again. For the most part, the writing reads well and the atmosphere is kept particularly unnerving. However, this book suffers a lot from trying to be a lot bigger than it needs to be. Trimming down on some of the elements could have really honed this book down into a nice 70s-style classic.

Loved how dark this book became. The messages were powerful and stirring. It both entertaining and a thoughtful read. Will check out from this author.

This book was pretty good, I would definitely recommend

~This was given by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Emily and her husband move to a farmhouse after the death of her mother. Soon after, Emily begins hearing noises and seeing lights in the old barn. It even seems to be moving in distance from the farmhouse. Is something supernatural really happening there, or is it her imagination caused from insomnia and stress?

While the premise is interesting, Emily's internal dialogue is sometimes clunky, resulting in a slowly moving plot.