Rüya

BOOK REVIEW 📚✨

Solace House by Will Maclean, 3 ⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

This was an interesting book with an intriguing premise. Some things worked for me and some didn’t.

First off the setting was great, a spooky house story meets folk horror and our grip on reality is slipping. This promised to be right up my alley.

The characters were just okay, I didn’t care for or connect to our protagonist all that much and all the side characters were very one-note. They could all be summarised with one adjective, like the Christian prude, or the stoner boy, or the weirdo (very breaakfast club haha).

As for the actual story, it started out good but for me the book lost steam halfway through. In my opinion the author introduced too many (personal) mysteries that were kept secret for a long time and weren’t paced correctly. It got a bit frustrating because the mysteries are constantly mentioned as being a mystery and information is explicitly withheld. The characters were very much acting like “look at me I’m withholding info and I’m reminding you I’m withholding it”

Another thing that didn’t work for me is that the lore got way too convoluted. Too many threads were being woven in and extending far and beyond.

Nonetheless it was an okay book and if you like the style it might be worth to pick up.