“The town of Banathel has a deep history of superstition and witchcraft. They believe there is evil in the world. They believe there are ways of…dealing with it. And they don’t expect outsiders to understand.”
Something in the Walls ⎼ Daisy Pearce
The first half of this book had me fully intrigued. It’s based in 1989 Britain during a horrid heatwave. Our main character, Mina, meets Sam at a bereavement group. She is still mourning the loss of her brother in childhood, he is mourning the loss of his young daughter. Sam is also a journalist, and when he learns Mina is a child psychologist, asks her to come with him to a small town to try and help a teen girl claiming to be possessed by a witch. Mina and Sam are both desperate and depressed, the small town is claustrophobic and almost manic, and the heatwave is so oppressive that it crawls off the page.
The story follows Mina and Sam as they move into the home of the Webber family to closely observe Alice. The mother is on a frayed last nerve, the father works as a cow slaughterer, and Alice’s two younger siblings are more or less just along for the ride. Their next door neighbor, Bert, pops in from time to time when he’s not caring for his sick wife, Mary. As the plot progresses and Mina meets more locals and explores the town, the creepiness starts to ooze in.
But the true creepy factor is Alice. She is a true 80’s possessed kid, complete with a total change in appearance, different voice, knowledge about Mina and Sam it’s impossible for her to know, suspicious deaths of her enemies, and a penchant for having wasps surround her. And the 95% of the time she’s not possessed? Absolutely normal, sweet, shy 13-year old girl. Mina spends most of her time with Alice, stuck in the house, hiding from the angry townspeople and the zealots who believe Mina can talk to the dead.
Mina and Sam’s dynamic shifts throughout the book, creating another layer of tenison to an already uncomfortable situation. While Sam’s there under the pretense of investigative journalism, it’s clear he wants to use Alice to speak to his dead daughter. And while Mina vehemently denies she was drawn to the Webber house for the same reason, talking to her brother is clearly something she desperately wants.
Unfortunately, the second half of this book disappointed me. I will get into details below (with spoilers because this is a rant). It felt like Pearce took two different plot lines and just mashed them together without pausing to create any resolution. I was invested in the Webber family’s fraught dynamic, the ever-invasive townspeople, and Mina and Sam’s slow decline out of reality. I was not invested in the sharp left turn the plot took from hauntingly creepy to chillingly realistic.
Overall, this was definitely a horror thriller. The whole book had me on the edge of my seat, terrified of what was happening. The only issue was that my fear transitioned to “What’s going to happen next?” to “Why is this happening next?” If you’re looking for something that blends a few different horror tropes like possession and witch hunting, this may be a better fit for you than it was for me!
Thanks to Netgalley, Minotaur Books, and Macmillan Audio for the free advanced book and audiobook in exchange for an honest review!
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