The Scare Salon

Overall, I enjoyed the book quite a bit; it kept me guessing throughout all its intriguing twists and turns, had some spooky sequences, and wrapped up in a satisfying way. The main character, I’ll admit, isn’t super likable, but she is relatable. I could have done without the romance angle, which I felt was rushed and underdeveloped, and some of the prose struck me as slightly clunky, but in the aggregate, I liked this book enough to be interested in the next two novels in the series.

So we’re following a thirty-three-year-old woman named Anne Towry, who lives alone in the big city and is somewhat adrift in life. She’s unemployed, and has no close friendships or romantic prospects to speak of; she doesn’t even have any pets or hobbies she’s passionate about.

Much of her malaise stems from her upbringing, which she’s spent years in therapy coping with. See, she grew up in this mansion called Whitehall Manor; her father was massively wealthy, and she was afforded every privilege in life. She particularly remembers her father doting on her and giving her gifts, and spending many happy days playing in the lavish gardens of her childhood home or perusing the well-stocked, cozy library.

She has darker memories of her childhood as well; her mother Seraphine was distant and cold, never playing with her or showing her any affection at all, even standing silently in a corner during one of Anne’s birthday parties, staring at her daughter with seeming hostility, or at least indifference.

And when Anne was ten years old, she was sent away to boarding school, much to her extreme anguish. She still has a vivid memory of her mother telling her to never come back to Whitehall as she was being bundled in the car and taken away. Since she has always believed that her mother hated her for some reason, and has furthermore blamed her for snatching her away from her beloved father and the only home she ever knew, Anne has not spoken to her mother since that day. This trauma from her childhood has messed with her psychologically for the past twenty-three years.

So imagine her surprise and suspicion when she gets a phone call from a guy named Dr. Cornish, who’s been looking after Seraphine in the town where Whitehall Manor is located. It was only through this Dr. Cornish that Anne discovered her father had died two months prior, and this gives Anne yet another reason to resent her mother, since Seraphine seemingly couldn’t even be bothered to tell Anne about the death.

This time, though, Dr. Cornish is calling because Seraphine has sort of gone missing; she won’t open the door to the house or answer his summons, and he thinks that maybe it would be better if Anne came up there to see what her mother’s deal was.

Anne of course is not too keen on this idea, basically telling him to handle it himself because she went no contact long ago, but he’s eventually able to persuade her to at least come up for one day and try to figure out what’s going on. Anne reluctantly drives to Whitehall.

When she gets there, she notices that the beautiful house has fallen to rack and ruin, which of course is to be expected, since Seraphine is older now and since the family fortune has been depleted to a point where she can’t afford a staff to look after the place anymore. Anne is sad to see the manor in such a state, though she is somewhat touched to see her father’s grave in the pretty marigold garden on the grounds.

Anne enters the house, and is further heartbroken to witness the mess inside. The electricity has been shut off, the plumbing doesn’t work, and it appears that Seraphine has been hoarding the place up with bins full of dirt, grass, and other crap she evidently brought in from outside.

A horrible smell in the place convinces her that Seraphine is likely dead, but then she’s confronted with her aged, clearly unwell mother, scrawny and crazy-looking, who scurries out and basically tells her to get lost. Anne, already over this shit, is all, “Okay, see ya.”

Anne then calls Dr. Cornish, tells him Seraphine is still alive but doesn’t want her help, and informs him she’s going back home. But a couple of things transpire to keep this from happening.

First, she meets a studly dude named Terran, who is the groundskeeper at Whitehall Manor. Seraphine doesn’t pay him, he says, but she allows him to live in a cottage on the grounds in exchange for him taking care of the gardens. Anne, who it’s implied hasn’t got any dick in a while, is intrigued by the idea of a fling with this hunky fella, and also doesn’t want him to think she’s an asshole for abandoning her sick mother, even though he doesn’t know anything about the history between them.

Second, Dr. Cornish all but threatens to report Anne to Adult Protective Services if she doesn’t at least stay long enough to arrange care for her deteriorating mother. The problem is that Anne is pretty much broke, and apparently the entire Towry fortune has been pissed away somehow, so there’s no money to hire someone to look after Seraphine.

Long story short (too late), Anne gets stuck at this crumbling mansion with a woman she hates who obviously doesn’t want her there. The place is gross and dirty and cold, a total fire hazard, and is filled with the carcasses of dead animals who crawled in through holes in the walls and roof. There’s also very little food and not much drinkable water.

The only bright spot in the whole sordid mess is Anne’s developing relationship with Terran, which as I mentioned struck me as rushed, unnecessary, and somewhat underbaked; he also disappears from the story for long stretches, though there is a reason for this.

As if simply staying at this once-grand shithole wasn’t bad enough, though, Anne also starts to think that maybe she’s losing her mind, or that maybe the house is even haunted. Seraphine has blocked off one entire wing of the house by barricading the door with a huge thing of concrete, but Anne nonetheless thinks she hears someone moving around in there, and sees someone that appears to be Seraphine in the windows of the closed-off rooms. She also hears screaming and gunshots on multiple occasions, and feels someone watching her or chasing her when she’s outside. Has Anne succumbed to the “Towry curse” of mental illness that struck many of her relatives? Or is something more nefarious going on?

I have to admit, I did not expect the strange avenues this story went down, which was definitely a point in the book’s favor. Just when I thought I had guessed what might be happening, some new wrinkle appeared that sent events off in an entirely different direction. Though I found the resolution of the mystery to be somewhat convoluted, I didn’t mind it all that much, as at least it was original and not predictable in the slightest.

If you like gothic horror stories set in ramshackle old mansions and dealing with long-buried secrets, madness, and scandal (and really, who doesn’t like that?), then The Haunting of Whitehall Manor should be right in your wheelhouse. It had a few small things about it I wasn’t a big fan of, but all in all, it kept me engaged the entire time, eager to see what crazy shit would happen next. I also liked that it could easily be read as a stand-alone story, but left enough threads open to continue on into the next two books, which I will get around to sooner or later.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.