I love a good atmospheric creepy story and The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts fits the bill. It’s a book which left me guessing and continually on edge. Keep reading this book review of The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts for my full thoughts.
Summary
In the aftermath of her mother’s death, Eleanor is unmoored. For years, her mother orchestrated every detail of her life—from meals, to laundry, to finances—as Eleanor focused on her career as an online therapist. Left to navigate the world on her own, Eleanor clings to her mother’s final directive: use her inheritance to buy a house.
Desperate to obey her mother one last time, Eleanor impulsively buys a model home in a valley-turned-construction site, a picturesque development steeped in a shadowy history. It feels like a fresh start, until the rain comes—an endless, torrential downpour. As water seeps in through the house’s cracks, the line between what is real and what is not begins to blur. Haunted by the stories of her clients, a stream of workmen and bureaucrats she can’t trust, and visions of ghosts from her past and present, Eleanor’s reality unravels, and she is forced to reckon with the secrets she’s buried and the choices she’s made.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts begins with unsettling cracks. It begins with an unmooring. With what happens when we’re cut loose and adrift. Inside the pages, ghosts and haunts are made real. Cracks in Eleanor’s life immediately show this weak foundation. The castle of dreams formed on clouds. With the backdrop of the torrential downpour, we are shown what disappears in a deluge. Eleanor’s story launches with a sense of eerieness and only increases as the rain takes on a life of its own. In many ways, The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts is a story about grief. The ways in which people bring up ghosts, regrets, and the past.
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The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts was intriguing from start to finish. In some ways, it’s about our environment which destroys us. Which worms into our dreams, allows the past to drag us down. In other ways, it’s about what we would do for our family and what happens when they leave us. It has tinges of codependency, of the cycles of parenthood relationships, when we go from child to adult to parent figure to child. The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts is an intriguing story which feels like a descent. Find The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts on Goodreads, Storygraph, Bookshop. org, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.