*I was given a copy of All the Dead Lie Down in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to HarperCollins and Kayrie McCauley*
Synopsis:
The Sleeping House was very much awake . . .
Days after a tragedy leaves Marin Blythe alone in the world, she receives a surprising invitation from Alice Lovelace—an acclaimed horror writer and childhood friend of Marin’s mother. Alice offers her a nanny position at Lovelace House, the family’s coastal Maine estate.
Marin accepts and soon finds herself minding Alice’s peculiar girls. Thea buries her dolls one by one, hosting a series of funerals, while Wren does everything in her power to drive Marin away. Then Alice’s eldest daughter returns home unexpectedly. Evie Hallowell is every bit as strange as her younger sisters, and yet Marin is quickly drawn in by Evie’s compelling behaviour and ethereal grace.
But as Marin settles in, she can’t escape the anxiety that follows her like a shadow. Dead birds appear in Marin’s room. The children’s pranks escalate. Something dangerous lurks in the woods, leaving mutilated animals in its wake. All is not well at Lovelace House, and Marin must unravel its secrets before they consume her.
Review:
All the Dead Lie Down has been an anticipated read for me. I’m really loving thrillers at the moment and I knew this would be a great one. From the get go there is a constant feeling of foreboding. It’s definitely the type of thriller that ramps up the tension at such a slow pace you don’t realise just how creeped out you are until there’s a moment with unexplained blood leading up to a bedroom window where something has definitely just crawled either to or from.
I definitely felt the Bly Manor influence for this and I loved it. Although I don’t know why, but the house and its inhabitants would have seemed way creepier if they were British. There’s something about imagining a child with an American accent that doesn’t make them unsettling at all, but give them a posh British accent? Creepy to the max.
Although saying that, I really loved both Wren and Thea. I don’t want to give any of the story away, but Wren goes through quite the development during the story, that is only obvious to the reader as she actually isn’t quite what she seems on the surface. I found myself not liking her much to begin with but I definitely softened to her after a while.
Now, Marin, she was a bit of a strange one. If I suspected that weird, dark things were happening in that house I would have been out of there like a shot. I get that she has no one and nowhere to go, but to be honest they did offer to help her if she chose to leave. It’s the weirdest thing, she was utterly naive whilst also being completely stubborn.
I loved Evie’s character a lot. She was the perfect protective big sister and she really carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. At first, I thought she was going to be a cold character who wanted nothing to do with Marin, but oh no, quite the opposite.
This brings me to their relationship, which sorry is a slight spoiler, but yay sapphics! It seemed to spring out of nowhere and it was very serious very fast, but I suppose that’s what teens are like really. The way they acted made me completely forget that they were only 17 and also that the story was set in the modern day.
Which brings me to my next point. All the Dead Lie Down has this weird time paradox feeling to it where it doesn’t seem to belong to any particular point in time. I’m going to assume this is intentional because it’s pretty impressive. You feel so creeped out by what is happening because it feels like the characters have no way of getting help as they are isolated in an old house. But no, it doesn’t have a specific time period, but Marin talks about having a phone so it’s fairly recent.
The first half of the book moved a little too slowly for my liking, but the second half more than made up for it. There are so many twists, turns and heart-racing moments that you find yourself itching to turn the page quickly so you can find out what is going on. The reveal of these twists is done very well and I really liked how everything linked together.
Overall, All the Dead Lie Down is an excellent thriller that sets you on edge from the get-go. It has interesting relationship dynamics and the thriller/mystery element is nothing unique, but the way in which the author has used it is completely compelling. I’d highly recommend this book.
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