The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters

After reading my first Sarah Waters book, Fingersmith, back in October, I was eager to read another to see if it lived up to the first. Safe to say, the second book I read, The Little Stranger, was even better. Again, this would have been the perfect read for the Halloween season - think big creepy house, supernatural happenings and people slowly losing their minds. The novel was written in 2009 and has since been made into a film (which I look forward to watching but somehow suspect that it will be a disappointment...), and follows the first-person protagonist, Doctor Faraday, who is a family doctor practising in the Warwickshire area. He is called to see a patient at the grand but dilapidated old estate Hundreds Hall, and recognises the house from when he was a young boy. 

He arrives to find it crumbling, with overgrown grounds and tired old rooms, and is disappointed to find the once impressive house falling to ruin. It is occupied by Mrs Ayres and her two grown-up children, Caroline and Roderick, and the family befriend Doctor Faraday immediately. As our protagonist becomes more involved in the lives of the family, initially helping Roderick's recovery from a war ailment but soon spending time with them as a friend, he begins to realise that things are not quite normal at Hundreds Hall. The family host a party where their usually calm old dog attacks a child for no reason; Roderick is tormented by mysterious burns appearing on his walls and ceiling; there is childlike handwriting found emblazoned onto the walls behind furniture which has stood unmoved for decades; and things which were thought lost turn up in mysterious places.

It is clear that something supernatural is happening at the hall, and the first to suspect it is Roderick, sadly succumbing to his fears when his suspicions are deemed as hysteria. Slowly but surely, each person in the house experiences these ghostly events and Faraday (at times a frustrating narrator) remains rational, blaming the events on the family's personal fears and insecurities. This book is full of twists and turns, spooky atmospheric moments and will have you on the edge of your seat until the very last chapter. A huge recommendation from me!