Review of Something in the Walls

Blurb: Newly minted child psychologist Mina has little experience. In a field where the first people called are experts, she’s been unable to get her feet wet. Instead she aimlessly spends her days stuck in the stifling heat wave sweeping across Britain and anxiously contemplates her upcoming marriage to careful, precise researcher Oscar. The only reprieve from her small, close world is attending the local bereavement group to mourn her brother’s death from years ago.

Then she meets journalist Sam Hunter at the grief group one day, and he has a proposition for her: Thirteen-year-old Alice Webber claims a witch is haunting her. Living with her family in the remote village of Banathel, Alice finds her symptoms are getting increasingly disturbing. Taking this job will give Mina some experience and much-needed money; Sam will get the scoop of a lifetime; and Alice will get better—Mina is sure of it.

But instead of improving, Alice’s behavior becomes inexplicable and intense. 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.

Review: It's 1980s Britain and an oppressive heat has settled over the country. Mina is a new child psychologist looking for experience, and she meets a journalist in her local bereavement group who offers her a job to assess a teenage girl named Alice Webber. Some people believe Alice's symptoms are supernatural, but Mina is determined to prove they're not and help Alice get better. Mina stays with the family in the small poor town of Banathel where superstition still is strong and they do believe in witches. They also have a way of dealing with that evil.

This is a standalone psychological folk horror. There are little bits of the supernatural in it, but Mina tries to explain them all away, and maybe she does. I appreciate a smart character looking for something rooted in reality and a logical reason for things happening before jumping to conclusions. Does it still scare Mina? Yes. Are these things really supernatural? We don't know. There is never a definitive answer, because the existence of the witch isn't what this story is focusing on.

The scariest thing is the people of Banathel. The whole town is superstitious as if still half in the dark ages. Alice's father terrified me. He works in a slaughterhouse and has a psychologically damaged personality because of it. Alice's friends turning on her so quickly is scary and then how the whole town just goes with it. It's frightening how easily people get caught up in these things.

Mina is a young woman shaped by grief, and the book deals with the issue of grief very well. She lost her brother to an illness in her teen years and her guilt is powerful. Sam Hunter, the journalist who accompanies her, is also dealing with a loss. That of his young daughter to cancer. I think the biggest strength of this book is how well it portrays grief. Grief is a tricky thing to write about, and many other genres avoid it or gloss over it. I'm always amazed at how amazingly horror books deal with emotions, the deep and dark ones, that other genres don't.

Both Mina and Sam take on this case with the hope that maybe Alice can really contact the dead. It twists all their motives and allows the witch to twist them. I guessed the secret early on, but it was still a great read. It has an oppressive tension that's like the heatwave they're experiencing. Do be warned there are some trigger warnings that I can't list because they'll ruin the twist, but do be prepared and search them up if you feel like you need to know before reading.

You can find Daisy Pearce on her site and buy the book here.