Haunted: Perron Manor by Lee Mountfield
Their new house has a nasty past
Haunted: Perron Manor is a case of a book pretty much delivering exactly what it suggests on the tin (er, cover): it’s the tale of a creepy old mansion with a sordid past that conceals dark secrets and promises of ghosts. Your typical, no nonsense, haunted house story updated for modern audiences. Wham, bam, thank you very much.
Sisters Chloe and Sarah inherit Perron Manor from their somewhat aloof uncle. Right out of the gate we know their uncle was odd, but how strange, exactly, was he? That’s just one of the tantalizing mysteries this book dangles to draw you in amid all the usual tropes of the traditional genre. But hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Haunted: Perron Manor plays a neat balancing act of playing with our expectations while also fulfilling them and it’s clear effort was made to make such fulfillments as satisfying for the reader as possible. Because — spoiler: it’s true — Perron Manor is haunted, and much more explicitly than, say, The Amityville Horror.
But if so scary, why do Chloe and Sarah stay?
Well, if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be much of a book, would there? In truth, it’s because they have nowhere else to go, both have pegged their futures on making something out of Perron Manor, of turning into their new home long-term and so they’re not about to be runoff by escalating creepiness. When oh when will characters in horror stories ever learn?
The fact is, Mountfield does a damn near masterful job of walking that tightrope, and successfully sells the motivation of both sisters (and Sarah’s husband, Andrew) as they come to the house with their own distinct pasts, perspectives, and hopes.
These are well-drawn characters indeed, and so it is easy to buy why one or the other of them might be willing to overlook certain scares or simply feel obligated to stay because they owe it to the others. It’s a delicate ballet of fear, skepticism, and very human self-doubt that is perfectly pitched.
There’s also the small matter that Chloe’s past is connected to this house. You see, some unspeakable horror happened here years ago, when Chloe was just a child. And while the nightmarish event in question is repeatedly referenced with regards to the unsettling haunting that’s going on here, you’ll have to sign up to Mountfield’s mailing list and read his prequel novella Inside: Perron Manor, to find out exactly what occurred that fateful evening.
As a standalone book, however, Haunted: Perron Manor delivers. It is a satisfying contemporary spin on the haunted house novel, decorated with all the ominous hallmarks of the genre one could want: secret rooms filled with occult paraphernalia, creepy strangers lurking outside at night, disturbing sleepwalking that might actually be possession in disguise…
Haunted: Perron Manor isn’t breaking any new ground, but there’s no suggestion that was the book’s intention in the first place. Instead, it tells an original yarn within a familiar framework, with interesting characters, and enough going on to keep you invested in finding out what happens next.
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