The Forever House by @LindaAcaster ~ reviewed for #RBRT #Mystery #TuesdayBookBlog

Author: Linda Acaster

Kindle Edition released in May 2022

Category: Mystery

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A chilling discovery. A sense of foreboding. They say I’m obsessing. I’m not.
Resisting family pressure to sell the too-big house Carrie and her late husband began to renovate, she is determined to carry through their shared project to prove she can manage alone.
And she can, until a discovery beneath old wallpaper chills her to the bone.
As her need to know more becomes all-consuming, Carrie’s family fears she’s tipping into irretrievable obsession. Can she be dissuaded, or must she take that final step?
How far is too far to right a wrong?

Carrie and her late husband, Jason, have made a career out of renovating houses to sell on. Carrie thought this last house was meant to be their forever home although Jason had other ideas, and Carrie was determined to finish the renovation despite people pressuring her to sell. Her son and his family live in Australia and, although they Skype regularly, the only person within striking distance is her very stylish, career orientated sister-in-law, Louise, who can’t understand why Carrie is carrying on with the renovation.

While removing wallpaper in one of the bedrooms, Carrie discovers childish drawings and numbers pencilled on the wall, a message and evidence of an old bolt that disturbed her deeply with its sinister implications.

My mind filled with ragged numbers climbing the corner of two walls. Had the edge of the wallpaper been teased back to complete the drawing unseen? To hide it? What for? Why not draw on paper, on a blackboard? Didn’t the child have one? This was a detached house with a large garden, not a back-to-back terrace with merely a yard. People of some substance would have lived here.

With only so much manual work able to be carried out at one time, Carrie decides to find out as much as she can about the previous occupants of her house. The more she uncovers, it seems the likelihood of any kind of happy ending grows less and less.

Carrie’s investigations drive the story, and it wasn’t quite was I was expecting, so the more I read the more invested I became in finding out what actually happened in Carrie’s house. Written well with a well put together plot and fleshed out characters, The Forever House is an enjoyable and intriguing read albeit with an undertone of tragedy and sadness.

I chose to read and review The Forever House for Rosie Amber’s book review team, based on a digital copy kindly supplied by the author.

Linda Acaster is an English multi-genre novelist and short-story writer, living on the misty Yorkshire coast, knee-deep in history and surrounded by ghosts. From mediaeval and Native American historicals, to chiller novella ‘The Paintings’ and a collection of short speculative fiction, a sense of place and time figures large in her work. The best example of this is the Fantasy Suspense ‘Torc of Moonlight’ trilogy. Ever thrown a coin into a “wishing well”?

Find out more on Linda’s website