November 29, 2021
Octagon House in Sumner’s Mills, N.Y., the setting of Fawcett’s atmospheric if cliché-hobbled debut, is notorious for the never-solved disappearance of its builder’s fiancée and her six-year-old daughter in 1936 and the murderous attack on a mother and her two young girls there in 1965. In the present, the ruined house’s pernicious pull threatens Clare Madden and Abby Lindsay, long-estranged childhood friends who remain haunted in different ways after their traumatic experience there as teens in 1998. When Abby’s parents reach out to tell Clare that Abby’s hospitalized following an apparent suicide attempt at Octagon House, Clare, whose life in Chicago has been unraveling after a miscarriage, returns to help—and to see if she can figure out how to finally free them both from the house’s spell. Fawcett skillfully intercuts present-day action with flashbacks to adolescents Abby and Clair and Octagon House’s fraught earlier history, but the genuine horrors she gradually reveals are buried under haunted-house chestnuts and jumbled plotting leading to what feels like a forced optimistic finale. The imaginative flair she displays promises better for next time. Agent: Victoria Marini, Irene Goodman Literary.
June 1, 2022
Deep in the forest lies the Octagon House, a haunted house in sleepy Sumner's Mills. A gruesome murder once happened there, and the house seems to be cursed. That doesn't stop teenagers Abby and Clare from visiting the house, but a part of Abby never left. Years later, when an adult Abby seems to attempt suicide in its basement, Clare, with her own adult life falling apart, returns to the small town in order to solve the mystery of what lies within the house's basement once and for all. The book moves between many different time lines, including the home's origins, the murders that stained it, and the girls' lives as teens and then adults. VERDICT Fawcett's debut novel is a haunted house story that spans generations but is anchored by its main protagonist Clare, who is thoughtful, caring, and easily relatable. Perfectly portrayed by narrator Carolina Hoyos, she's a truly empathetic protagonist who is trying to discover what went wrong in her life as well as Abby's and who thinks the answers might lie within the Octagon House.--James Gardner
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