Debut Novel.

Marion is in her 50s still sleeps with teddy bears, her older brother who rules the house has something secret locked in the basement. He suffers a heart attack that changes all of their lives.

Flashbacks to her memories of a lonely childhood, growing up without love, attempting to make friends, but young girls can be mean which adds to her feelings of low self worth.

After her brother's surgery- he instructs her to go in basement. So she does!

I was not blown away but I did keep reading to know the conclusion.

It does make you THINK!!

I would give this book a 2.5 stars.

When I first read the synopsis of this book, it instantly drew me in. A brother and sister still living together in the house that they grew up in and the brother keeping "visitors" in the cellar, sound like my kind of story!

This is more of a character driven story, but I kinda figured out what kind of people they were by the 3rd or 4th chapter, but it seemed to keep going with the "character building" for about 3/4 of the book. And even once you get to find out about the visitors it just really didn't pick up at all. I was hoping for a great thriller, but for me this was a bit of a snoozer.

Yes, I so wanted to love this book, and there will be others out there who will love it, but I feel that for me, it fell flat.

I enjoyed this book despite the gruesome storyline and twisted characters, or maybe because of them. Would it really be possible for Marion to have a complete change of personality after her experiences with the visitors while John continued his evil ways?

This was one scary story, dark, disturbing, suspenseful and I absolutely loved it! Each chapter ended with a tease for the next chapter. I really don't want to give too much of the story away, but this is a spine-tingling, edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller. I disliked Marion from the beginning, and began to dislike her more and more with each chapter, but that was so much a part of the story. I probably should have felt sorry for her, her childhood contributed to the person she now was, but I still felt she was a grown woman and could have changed things. But the story shows how deeply the effect can be from abuse, both physical abuse and emotional abuse. Both she and her brother John, were truly awful and I hope I never, ever meet anyone like them!

A chilling , compelling gothic thriller. Marion lives with her older domineering brother John in crumbling mansions. They Love with "visitors' in the cellar. Who are they and where do they come from will keep you up all night turning the pages

'The Visitors' is a terrific read. It builds slowly, letting the reader get to know Marion and the small life she leads, her little pleasures and worries. All the while, as we get to know Marion, we know that something isn't quite right in the house she lives in with her brother John. We know that visitors have arrived and haven't left, that cries are sometimes heard coming from the cellar. What exactly is happening down there? Will Marion do anything to stop her brother? And does Marion have secrets of her own?

I loved the way the dread slowly built, and the sympathy I felt for Marion grew. I loved the ending--it was just perfect. Highly recommended.

The title suggested this would be so much more. Told from Marion's point-of-view, there is no rationale given for WHY John became a monster. For me, the story took life at 63%. I was glad to see Marion take control of her life. The ending was a shocker to me. I thought something else would happen.
Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC. I didn't care for it but this is one single opinion. I am sure there will be many who will find it suspenseful.

Creepy, stay up late to finish book. I found it disturbing to think about.

The Visitors is an eerie novel that will have readers looking over their shoulders in fear that something is lurking in the dark! The atmosphere is deeply foreboding... The twists are utterly shocking! And when it all comes together, readers will dread it. Highly recommended!

The story is told from Marion's point of view. Her life growing up in a wealthy dysfunctional family and her inability to cut herself free of John, her authoritarian older brother. The majority of the novel takes place during Marion's mid-life as she stumbles along caring for her brother John and the house they grew up in, while flashing back in time to glimpses of them as children and events in life which have had unexpected impact on how their lives ended up.

This book was at once funny and horrific if you can believe that. I had no idea where it was leading, and found myself either laughing out loud or gasping in disgust. I couldn't put it down!

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read this advance copy of The Visitors in return for an honest review.

I liked the fact that for most of the book, I had no idea where it would lead; it made me think of all sorts of possibilities.. Marion and her brother John live lives unfamiliar to most of us and though the story is told through Marion's point of view, we do get to know John as well, maybe too well.

Who are the Visitors and where did they come from? Do they live in the basement? Are those screams Marion hears and hides from? Interesting book while also unsettling, but worth reading.

From the minute you open the first pages of this book it draws you in. You wonder why a middle-aged woman, Marion, lives at home and why she sleeps up in the farthest reaches of their house with a group of stuffed animals. You then meet John, her older brother. As soon as you are introduced to him you know something isn't right. You can't quite put your finger on it but the way his relationship is with his sister and his parents, his obsession with school, and the temper that is observed even with his parents. You start to see the full picture of why each is the way they are. How Marion is constantly put down by her parents and made fun of at school; how their parents are terrified of John and his outbursts; and how Marion and John end up living together as adults with no one else really in their life......so you think. Then you hear the "visitors " mentioned, and you wonder when they had visitors because it says nothing about that. If you can stick with it to the end it will be revealed and you will never think of Marion and John the same again. I also have to say I never saw the end coming! I would definitely recommend this book.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from The Visitors by Catherine Burns. I didn’t know much about the plot when I started reading it and its Catherine’s excellent writing and wit that has kept me completely glued to this book for the last few days. It’s creepy, suspenseful and funny in parts. Neither the main character Marion or her weird brother John are particularly likable but you find yourself reading and reading, trying to determine if its John that is imagining things or Marion and what is really happening?

Here’s the plot:

Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother John in a crumbling mansion on the edge of a northern seaside resort. A timid spinster in her fifties who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to live by John’s rules, even if it means turning a blind eye to the noises she hears coming from behind the cellar door…and turning a blind eye to the women’s laundry in the hamper that isn’t hers. For years, she’s buried the signs of John’s devastating secret into the deep recesses of her mind—until the day John is crippled by a heart attack, and Marion becomes the only one whose shoulders are fit to bear his secret. Forced to go down to the cellar and face what her brother has kept hidden, Marion discovers more about herself than she ever thought possible. As the truth is slowly unraveled, we finally begin to understand: maybe John isn’t the only one with a dark side….

I am at the very end of this book and cannot wait to see how it concludes! Put this one on your Goodreads list immediately. Will be out in September.

A truly chilling tale of Marion and John, a timid spinster sister and arrogant authoritarian brother, who live in their childhood mansion amidst the ghostly sounds behind the cellar door. Marion tries to live by the rules of her brother and to ignore the voices she hears from below as well as the feminine affects she sees throughout the house. When John becomes ill, Marion must open the door to the other side and come face to face with John's secrets. A well written tale that reveals that not all is as it first appears.

Despite real skill as a writer Catherine Burns failed to grab me with this meandering to the point of aimlessness account of the life of poor, plain Marion Zetland. We simply spend too much time in Marion pathetic world to feel the real weight of what her sociopathic and surprisingly pathetic brother John is doing. We, like Marion, simply exist in this world of horded childhood objects and depressing little fantasies populated by afternoon movie actors sort of just waiting for something, anything to happen.

All the while as we tread limpid, festering water with Marion crazy brother John is spending most of his time with his "visitors" in the basement. Because we aren't completely stupid and have read the tag lines comparing this to "Room" we get pretty much from page one that these aren't "visitors" so much as they are teenage girls tied up in the basement who John "loves." But John and his harem don't enter the narrative in any kind of meaningful way until its far too late. When John collapses and must be rushed to the hospital about 1/4 from the end of the book its simply too late to get invested in what Marion does, much less why she does it, when she finds what he's been "hiding."

Marion's complete and total shift in character at the absolute last possible second isn't shocking partly because "thriller" has more or less become synonymous with "trick ending that is trying desperately to emulate 'Gone Girl'" but also because its kind of absurd. There's also a misplaced supernatural element here that is also totally baffling and had me trying to work if one of Marion's many, many issues is that she's hallucinating things.

The idea of getting to who the "real" villain is in a story isn't a bad one at all. In fact it can be a great deal more interesting then just watching a bunch of teenagers being held in a basement or following a sad sack older woman around her appalling house. The problem with "The Visitors" for me was that I simply didn't care who the bad guy was. Both Marion and John are you garden variety icky schlubs with horribly creepy, sad childhoods that were instrumental in forming them into the lunatics they are today but they're quite possibly the most boring lunatics I've met in awhile.

Clearly we're meant to be shocked by the revelation that John is not the homicidal lunatic in this equation. But for god's sake he's kidnapped three teenagers and kept them in a basement for ten years! I'm supposed to be amazed that he's not a blatant murderer? I'm supposed to be flabbergasted that a woman who's spent her whole life being told how worthless she is would "suddenly" go ballistic and be unable to hold in her anger and sadness for one more minute?

I don't know, this just wasn't for me. I kept turning pages hoping for something to get invested in but it just wasn't meant to be.

Wow. This was one suspenseful book. Couldn't stop reading it. Very much like The room.