Great house, bad house, saying nothing else.

A young woman goes to a house in the mountains to check on her cousin. That's the setup, the setup is all you're getting, and the back cover gives you that much anyway.

What I can talk about is the house, which is the best thing here. Damp, English, wrong, and the writing makes you notice the wallpaper long before it makes you notice anybody's motives. Also the family, who are appalling in a way that felt fresh to me even though the ingredients aren't new.

I guessed a big piece of it around page 140 and I was about half right, which is honestly the ideal result? Right enough to feel clever, wrong enough to still get got at the end.

Where it lost a couple of points for me: the closing stretch goes somewhere very different in tone and I wasn't ready for it. My book club split straight down the middle and two of them stopped speaking to each other over it, which is the highest compliment a book club can pay anything.

Seventh on my list so far this year. Would sit higher on a different ending.