This book originally had my attention due to its stunning cover and setting that takes place in Edinburgh. OH! AND it’s a haunting! Who doesn’t love those? The premise of the haunting surrounding a main character who is a “ghostly” tour guide also made this an easy choice for me. The whole time I was reading I kept thinking about all the haunted ghost tours I have been on and whatnot.
The brief summary is as follows:
Ghosts have always walked there. Now they’re not alone…
In 1891, Edinburgh’s Henderson Close is a seething mass of humanity, poverty, crime, and degradation. Even murder. Miss Carmichael is a middle-aged spinster, living in the prosperous New Town. She regularly takes food, money, and clothing to families living in the Closes, deep within the slums of the Old Town. In the present day, Henderson Close, having been buried under the foundations of newer buildings a century earlier, is a major tourist attraction.
Cavendish did a great job at freaking me out – at least three times when I was in bed late at night I chose to stay IN bed instead of leaving the safe confines of my room to go to the bathroom. There are definitely a few scenes that irked me a bit. And that’s just one of the many reasons I love a good ghost/haunting story!
While I continued to read I just knew this was going to end up a 5- star book for me. But then I came across the last 20 pages or so. I am not sure what happened. Maybe I had a mental brain freeze. But the story just got extremely complex and twisty out of nowhere to me and it left me scratching my head. I had to reach out to two other friends who also finished to clarify what happened but they were in the same boat as me. It was almost as if out of nowhere all these different plots started coming together in a rushed way and I just couldn’t totally get it.
While the last couple chapters were not up to par with the rest of the book for me, I still thoroughly enjoyed The Haunting of Henderson Close. I did enjoy the MAIN ending (even if I did not fully grasp some of the other plotline endings…) I would recommend this and am still giving it 3.5 stars!
Thank you to Flame Tree Press for sending me an advance copy in exchange for an honest review!
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