The House by the Cemetery by John Everson

Welcome to Day 7 of the Blog Tour for John Everson's ' The House by the Cemetery' (Flame Tree Press)

I must say I liked the premise of this. Mike Kostner needs a job (he's a carpenter by trade), his friend needs a house doing up in time for Halloween and the house has a spirit/witch that needs blood, death etc.

Going into this I was hoping for something quite gory and blood soaked and in that respect I wasn't disappointed. I grew up in the age where video was king and horror movies ruled the roost. This reads like it would have been made for those times. The horror/gore when it comes (more on that soon) is the type that can unsettle the reader (in a good way, that is what the genre is  for really). I often found myself slightly nervous about turning the page - kind of like when you watch a movie and want to turn away even though you know you won't. This was what Everson did really well.

Where it fell down for me slightly was the early section of the tale. After the initial set up it seemed to take an age for the story to get going. I just wanted to skip through to the scares (I'm not handy by any sense of the imagination so the DIY and house rebuilding did nothing for me). If it had been a video I would have been hitting the fast forward a lot I guess.

So, in short, a decent haunted house story just in time for Halloween from an author I have not read before but certainly will in the future.

3 1/2 of 5 stars

Many thanks to Anne Cater and Flame Tree Press for providing me with a review copy of this book and for inviting me onto the tour. If you get the time please have a look at the other reviews and blog posts too.

Final word on the publisher themselves. I am fairly new to Flame Tree Press but must say I am really impressed by the quality of both the physical quality of the books and the stories and authors they have on board.