A House of Ghosts
By: W. C. Ryan / Narrated By: Esther Wane
Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
Not as Gothic or as creep-ridden as I’d hoped, but a solid whodunnit instead
Lemme put it like this: Yes, I DID read the Publisher’s Summary cuz I was looking for Halloween Creep-Fest Listens this year, but NO I hadn’t a clue as to what I was in for. It’s cuz the P. Summary is all of one (Count ‘em: One!) freaking line over on Audible. So I basically judged the book by its cover and its title and saw that there’d be some séances and a murder and stuff, and I dove right in.
And from the beginning, as I was listening, I came to realize that our protagonists were headed via boat to an island, amidst choppy seas, with a somewhat “haunted” Blackwater Abbey, home to a man making his fortune from munitions dealing during WWI as the destination—Aha! said I: I’m in for a somewhat Gothic sorta tale! And I giggled happily into the back of my hand. Add to that a Hero with a bit of an attitude, and a heroine with rather formidable smarts (AND can see ghosts, AND has a mirror she can see the dead and the future in!), and Lordy me—said giggle turned into a howl of delight. I’d done many a Listen for Halloween prior to this, but not too many of them were shriek fests. So I was very excited. Start everything off with a séance where people are honestly freaked out, all with a shrieking storm screaming violently outside the walls, a shell-shocked and claustrophobic soldier being a conduit? Huzzah! We’re in for some wicked and ghastly delights, no?
Uhm, noooo…. not exaaaaactly.
Cuz after all of that, our Hero Captain Donovan and heroine Kate somehow find themselves in a bit of a whodunnit with espionage being the main source of unease. Yeh yeh yeh, A House of Ghosts has ghosts coming out of the woodwork, and sure things start promising enough with one seer of the undead spotting another by the way he steps around the invisible ghosts rather than walking through them. And Blackwater Abbey has a profoundly long history dating back to eeeeeeons ago, so there are even skulls and skeletons stored in the Abbey’s depths, but author W. C. Ryan contents himself with simply stating: My there are a plethora of ghosts, and NOT Holy COW there are GHOSTS!!! The undead cause little unease for our characters, so there’s no fright, and even that mirror for the undead doesn’t show the undead so much as it does a soon-to-be murder.
While a motley assortment of individuals was invited to the island, each with secrets they harbor, and Kate wants to see her MIA brother, last seen suffering mustard gas in one of the trenches on the front, and Lord and Lady Highmount wish to see their two sons KIA on the front during the séances, things in the story devolve from kinda sorta creepy hauntings to an attack on Lady Highmount and a Gee—Maybe the blow was meant for Lord Highmount, and whoooo would want to kill him?!? It turns out everybody does, so the story becomes a guessing game of motive, opportunity, and weapon of attack; a sort of a game of “Clue”.
And since I’m no good when it comes to sleuthing, and since I was totally hoping for spookiness and the undead, I found myself vastly disappointed even tho’, to be sure, the writing is excellent, and the story crafting was top notch. I liked how Kate and Donovan developed, how their relationship evolved, even to the point where it started becoming a bit of a romance—which I’m NEVER averse to… But again, ‘twasn’t what I’d been looking/hoping for.
Also to its credit was Esther Wane’s excellent narration. I’m mostly familiar with her work in Romances and Women’s Fare, so I was a trifle bemused to see her doing a ghost story. As the story unfolded, however, as it became a bit of a romance, I quickly came to realize WHY she’d been chosen. She does character development like nobody’s business, so yes, understandable. I did, however, wonder about the lack of a heavy Irish brogue for Donovan, only to hear at the verrrrrry end that he didn’t have much of one, so I wound up giving Ms. Wane a pass on that too.
Okay, so all I’ve done, really, is grumble and gripe, so perhaps I’ll just say here that I enjoyed the story overall, very much so. And esPECially the way it ended, with a sort of opening for further books featuring Kate and Donovan and sleuthing galore. No ends were left dangling, all was wrapped up, but there was plenty of room for a later installment (I do so haaaate it when that opening for a sequel comes at the expense of wrapping things up neatly: A Cliffhanger as carrot waved to entice… I’m looking at YOU, Michael J. Sullivan—I’ll get around to beating you about the head for all of YOUR cliffhanger endings in reviews to come!).
Fun story, quirky characters, the utter destruction of WWI front and center in this audiobook that has great narration as a plus. It’s just? Well, it’s just that I was looking to hear about people getting the heck scared outta ‘em by rampaging and marauding ghosts.
So suuuuuue me…!
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