Home Sick - Rhiannon Grist
- Kindig
- 11 hours ago
- 2 min read
HOME SICK
RHIANNON GRIST
*****
A troubled woman seeking a fresh start in the Scottish countryside believes her neighbour may be behind the strange disturbances in her home in this psychological horror debut for fans of The Lamb and We Used to Live Here.
“The symmetry should have tipped me off.”
After a violent incident at work, Tamsin goes looking for a fresh start in a remote cottage far away from her old life. Here she could make real friends, find a job she loves, become a whole new person, even.
But the solitary cottage is actually a semi-detached, with only a thin wall separating her from a total stranger. Her neighbour is an enigma. Dowdy one moment, vivacious the next, but always wearing an unnerving smile. Tamsin can’t shake the feeling that there’s something wrong with her, especially when she starts experiencing disturbances in her own home.
As the locals share strange stories about her house, and her barely contained paranoia spirals out of control, Tamsin begins to suspect that the past she was so desperate to escape might never let her go.
MY REVIEW
*****
Although October is my official spooky season at Kindig Blog, I love a horror story all year round. The blurb of Home Sick was really intriguing, and I was excited to get started!
Tamsin is ready for a fresh start – she buys a cottage in the middle of the countryside without viewing it and is ready to start a new life away from the world. However, when she arrives and discovers the house is a semi-detached with an erratic neighbour, she realises her new house might not be the peaceful haven she had imagined…
From the moment I started Home Sick, I was hooked. Rhiannon Grist has created a real, lived in character of Tamsin who I empathised with throughout. Don’t get me wrong – she has a lot of flaws; she’s angry at the world, paranoid about what people think of her and makes some silly decisions. However, none of these flaws felt out of character for her at any point – this was just who she was. Without any spoilers, her character has quite a journey and a personality arc to travel on which led to a satisfying conclusion.
There’s an undercurrent of tension and unease which runs throughout the story. As a reader, we are constantly kept on the back foot – unsure of what is real and what is happening in Tamsin’s imagination or thoughts. There is a lot of her backstory which we are also are kept in the dark about until the very end – with vague references to something that has happened at work in her past in Edinburgh which drove me forward – wanting to find out more. The supernatural and horror aspects of the book were great, although the main twist is signposted very early on which I think ruined the reveal somewhat.
Overall, Home Sick is a twisty psychological thriller which puts you right in the mind of its somewhat twisted main character and had me hooked from the outset. Thank you to NetGalley & Rebellion – Solaris for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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