The Haunting of Blackwood House Paperback – 19 Dec. 2015

Just finished reading the haunting of blackwood house, I thoroughly enjoyed it for the majority. Darcy Coates has a great talent of building suspense and atmosphere, besides a descriptive and engrossing writing style. I finished this book in 3 days and it drew me in very quickly. Sadly I do not read often enough, but was pleased with this offering.I noticed many reviewers commenting how they found the main character Mara to be the main gripe, unfortunately I have to agree. It's easy to see Mara has her fair share of problems, but she does become somewhat of an annoyance. Her partner Neil is the polar opposite, although does not compensate for her emotional short comings. Mara combined with certain other typical horror clichés does give the book a certain B movie, cheesy quality. This does leave a sour taste in your mouth as there are some fantastic moments within. These are mainly the excellent night time sequences, which reminded me a lot of "the haunting of hill house" by Shirley Jackson.These are just a small little niggles in an otherwise great book, If you are looking for a good ghost story then look no further.

Have just discovered this author and am addicted. 3 books read in 48 hours. Jeez…. I need to sleep. These are not original ideas. And have every haunted house cliche you can think of but the characters are endearing and you just get drawn in. Of the 3 books I have read I just want to know ‘what happens now?’ Okay. Onto the next one. :-) 👍🏼

This is the first book I've read by Darcy Coates, I thought, on the whole, it was very good, it has all the elements of a good haunted house story, it's a creepy, sinister, page-turner. An isolated old house, with a dark history, no electricity, no phone, no transport, our heroine lives there alone, in lots of darkness, all great elements for suspense. It's light on characters, but that worked for me, if I had to make a criticism, I did find it unbelievable given everything that happens at the house that it takes so long into the story for Mara to accept the house is haunted, even given her upbringing and background, for me at least, that let the story down. 4.5.

This is the first book I have read by Darcy. It is well written and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am about to read the next one.

It’s another good read from Coates. This is the third one I’ve read (although this might have been her first book??) and the romantic storyline kinda threw me as it’s not my interest but it works over all.

Sorry to be at discord with most of the reviews, but it is definitely not five stars. I wish I could divide it into two reviews - one for paranormal aspect, another for main characters. The paranormal is OK - a haunted house created by a sick maniac who stays there after his death. Some decent twists of the story. Atmospheric. Read at night it may be mildly frightening. Some good finds - I liked the dark invisible threads connecting to the various spirits. Happy ending is predictable and disappointing, but I could live with it. Now: main characters. Where do I stat? The heroine is annoying to say the least. She is just plain unpleasant, lonely, stubborn borderline, unable to keep friendships, jobs and relations, unable to forgive and accept other people's weaknesses. And she ends up with a Perfect Boyfriend. Lo and Behold: Neil, every dissatisfied woman's dream. Big and strong, carpenter with muscles and some money, blue eyes, big shoulders, non-swearing Christian with a charming mother. Caring and all-forgiving to the point of sickly sweet. Always appearing at the right moment to save lives and serve tea. Loves Her to bits, of course. That is it. A couple of insignificant mediums are thrown into the mix close to the end. They are so indistinct that you actually struggle to remember what they are there for. Minus one for characters, folks.I found myself skipping pages near the end.

This could have been a great Ghost story and the author does manage to create some scary moments but these are infrequent. The book, at 40 chapters, is way too long to be able to sustain continual interest (I could easily put it down), the characterisation is dreadful, the attempts at romance pitiful, the ending comes out of nowhere (i.e. there is nothing that even hints at the conclusion through the long meandering storyline), the epilogue has been lifted from the ending of Beetlejuice and the main character Mara is arrogant, self satisfied and malicious in her treatment of other human beings - which is tagged as being an independent female. I stuck with it because of the 5 star ratings - it's a bit like a bad movie that you can't believe you are watching but keep going because you believe it is about to get better. If Darcy Coates could learn the art of brevity I am sure she could be a terrific author of supernatural books.

This book was easy to read and kept you wanting to know what would happen next but it would have worked better for me if there had been less gore/more suspenseful build up. It felt a bit like an over the top horror film where the background story is not that believable and actually becomes less scary. Would read more from this author though.