Today's post is on
The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste. It is 246 pages long and is published by Saga Press. The cover is picture with a woman standing facing a foggy background and down the cover is reflecting the top like a lake but there are two women in the reflection. The intended reader is someone who likes ghost stories and queer love stories. There is mild foul language, implied sexuality, and no violence in this novel. The story is told from first person close. There Be Spoilers Ahead.
From the dust jacket- The Velkwood Vicinity was the topic of occult theorists, tabloid one-hour documentaries, and even some pseudo-scientific investigations as the block of homes disappeared behind a near-impenetrable veil that only three survivors could enter—and only one has in the past twenty years, until now.
Talitha Velkwood has avoided anything to do with the tragedy that took her mother and eight-year-old sister, drifting from one job to another, never settling anywhere or with anyone, feeling as trapped by her past as if she was still there in the small town she so desperately wanted to escape from. When a new researcher tracks her down and offers to pay her to come back to enter the vicinity, Talitha claims she’s just doing it for the money. Of all the crackpot theories over the years, no one has discovered what happened the night Talitha, her estranged, former best friend Brett, and Grace, escaped their homes twenty years ago. Will she finally get the answers she’s been looking for all these years, or is this just another dead end?
Review- A good ghost story about how until we face our past we can never escape it. Talitha Velkwood has been running from her ghosts for twenty years. One night her whole neighborhood just become a ghost town. No one can go in and never ever comes out. When a paranormal researcher comes with an offer of money for her just to try and walk into her neighborhood, she goes. The driving force of the story is the characters, mainly Talitha and Brett. Their relationship and history is the crux of the story. Talitha has never found herself nor had the courage to live her life for herself. While this is a horror novel, there is no gore or hard violence in this novel.
I give this novel a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this novel from my local library.