Shortly before midnight, four teenagers broke into the old abandoned psychiatric hospital on Beacon Hill. Only three came out again. The missing girl – Riley Holt – is the seventeen-year-old daughter of the local police chief and she appears to have vanished into thin air. Called from Manhattan to take over the case, Detective Maria Miller and her partner Frankie Conroy uncover the sinister past of the abandoned hospital, which was once the hiding place of the notorious College Kid Killer, who never revealed the burial site of his final victim.

Then a fresh grave is discovered in the hospital’s old cemetery and Maria expects the worst. But when the remains of two young women are recovered, it appears that neither belongs to Riley. Maria and her team make the connection between the secret grave and the College Kid Killer, but with Riley still missing and her three friends unable to shed any light on her whereabouts, the case gets more complex by the minute.

Maria must delve into the hospital’s tragic past – and into the girl’s own family history – to work out what happened to Riley Holt. While the girl’s father acts the part of the distraught parent, Maria’s instincts tell her that something isn’t right. And the elderly former caretaker of the hospital seems to know more than he’s letting on. As she comes close to the terrifying truth, eyes follow Maria’s every move. She’s about to put her own life on the line but can she find Riley before it’s too late?

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Kindle | 28 Chp | 231pg

Trying to fit an extra few books into my March reading. You all know how much I enjoyed ‘The Haunting on West 10th Street’. It is one of the only books of 2024 that has made it into my Top 10 of the year, so far. So, of course when I knew this book was coming out I was going to read it. I actually pre-ordered it and read it on Kindle – I will now also buy the paperback – but I was too eager to read it.

Picking up after a brief interlude from the first book, Maria and Frankie have settled into their new job roles as the detectives of the ‘strange case’ unit. A modern day Mulder and Scully. This book is a quick read. It took me just under 2 hours to read but it was a compelling read that I didn’t wander away from.

This time, Maria and Frankie head to an abandoned Psychiatric Asylum and are challenged by the facts they find there. The Haunting of West 10th Street was compelling in its intensity and dive into devil worship. The dual narrative in that book were like two sides of the same coin and I did wonder, if this was turn into a series, would the next book be as compelling.

Her Lost Soul came out so left field from what I was expecting and from a character point of view, there was a lot to be overcome and challenged. I think the events of Haunting of West 10th Street rattled both Maria and Frankie to the point that being able to see what was real and what was a nightmare became indistinguishable. This book challenged their view on what they saw as ‘unexplained’ and Maria saw her perception grow and allow her to see more of the unexplained.

Her Lost Soul also has a dual narrative. The present day and 1960. It was an interesting concept, especially when written with a character persona that we should all be aware of. In the present day, we hear a lot of stories about the horrific nature and experiments that occurred in some Psychiatric Asylum, so the idea of many trapped souls seemed normal for a building that had seen such tragedy.

The dark entity presented in this book was as much a wisp of darkness as it was a formed body. It managed to instil a level of fear to all characters that interacted with it and as the reader, I felt at times that I was experiencing that same fear. It was quite an intense adrenaline fuelled read.

We also see the return of Missy and Emilia, who were central to both the narratives in The Haunting on West 10th Street. I was happy to see them return. I enjoyed them as characters in the first book and recognise that as characters they can offer more explanation and depth to the world that both Maria and Frankie and now stepping in.

This book tingled as I read it. I mean that the story washed over my brain and stayed stuck and this may well be a book I dream about for a couple of days. The story was powerful.

I think that we like to believe that these things can happen and that these dark entities exist because it takes the pressure and weight away from having to admit that some humans are capable of the same darkness. The unexplained has always interested humans and as a story, this definitely made me think about certain aspects of the past and whether we could have done more, and whether we had improved in our processes over the years.