I’m a huge Mira Grant fan. I have liked everything she’s ever written - until now. This haunted house mystery was a very slow build. The actual mystery-solving didn’t begin until 45% into the story. The characters did not feel fully developed, and neither did the story. There were creepy-ish parts, but overall, it lacked the makings of a successful mystery. I’m so sad to not be able to give it more stars. Thank you to Subterranean Press and Netgalley for the advanced copy.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2862830470

In The Shadow of Spindrift House
by Mira Grant
due 6-30-2019
Subterranean Press
4.5 / 5.0

#netgalley. #InTheShadowOfTheSpindriftHouse

Absolutely hooked me from the start. This short mystery is full of eerie investigations and discoveries.
The Spindrift House was built by a rich fisherman for his beloved bride, a French-Canadian girl who spoke little english. When he did not return from a fishing trip, she threw herself off the widow's walk and died on the stones below. Her ghost is said to be seen in the house, and can be heard weeping.
Meanwhile 3 different families claim ownership to Spindrift but only 2 of the 3 have come together to offer 3.5 million to anyone who will go into the house and find the original deed for the house. The last few were found dead by a guard when they failed to ever come out.
4 young people all have reasons to find the deed, and decide to take up the families offer.
What are they so afraid of?
What awaits them in this house?
Can it be explained?
How do you define "home"?
This was a quick and great read, Mira Grant is a wonderful storyteller.
Thanks to the author and publisher for sharing this ebook ARC for review

I have bad luck with Mira Grant books. Feed is about to join the permanent DNF pile because I have been stuck at 85% for over six months. Now this book…

The story has promise – four childhood friends on the cusp of adulthood decide to take one last case before disbanding their teen investigation agency. If they succeed at this case, they will earn over 7 million dollars which would have them set for whatever future paths they want to take. Only the case hasn’t been solved in decades for a reason, and the price they all will have to pay might be too high…

I picked up In the Shadow of Spindrift House because of the cover and the decidedly lovecraftian vibe the blurb gave off. To be honest, the story manages to keep that feeling, since it deals with things slithering in the deep and observing the human race run its rat race from the comfortable viewpoint of almost immortality, but the end product is underwhelming, at least for me.

My problem with Mira Grant’s books is that I can’t connect to the characters. I think it’s because the author “tells us” about their emotional connections to each other, but never really “shows us”. Case in point – we are told several times that Harley is in love with Addy, but her actions during this story don’t show this. Plus Addy is portrayed as such a negative light throughout the book that I found it hard to believe that Harley was in love with her. Especially since we don’t “see” that love in her actions, we are just told of that feeling through her thoughts.

And that’s the case with the dynamics between all four characters. We are told they have been close since childhood. We are told they have been solving cases together and are kinda sorta famous, but we are not shown any of it. So when the horrors start creeping in and bad things happen to the characters… yes, it’s horrible, but not as shocking as it could have been, because as a reader, we haven’t seen that emotional connection that is supposed to exist between Harley and them.

And I think that is the biggest flaw of this story. Harley is too detached from everything, even before she leads her team to the doomed exploration of Spindrift House. Heck, she shows more emotion towards that house than she does towards any of her longtime friends, almost brother, and what she herself calls the love of her life… Yet, she casts them all aside seemingly without as much as an afterthought.

Maybe if the book wasn’t this short, the author could have had time to build to the horror of this last case by showing us how the characters interacted BEFORE it all happened. Maybe actually show us some of the other cases they did together. Show us the dynamic in their little team… If we saw those connections instead of being told they exist, the stakes of what happened in Spindrift House would have been much higher and more impactful.

So to summarize, it’s a well-written book when it comes to creating descriptions and the creepy atmosphere of the house, but that suffers from the excessive case of tell, not show.

PS: I received and advanced copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

In the Shadow of Spindrift House is a neat little novella acknowledging some major debts to different canons. Mira Grant has taken Shirley Jackson's Hill House, where walls continued upright and bricks met neatly, and mashed it up with the wild, Lovecraftian crashing sea (in which nature abhors straight angles), in a timeworn fishing village in Maine. And into this blender, she's dumped a cup full of Scooby-Doo references.

Harlowe's been part of a mystery-solving team for years. As the team gets ready to split up and face separate futures, they take on one last case, one related to Harlowe's tragic past, and find they may have reached their limits.

It's a trifle compared to some of her other works, but considering the influences she combines, a full-length novel would be difficult to sustain. Recommended for fans of any of the above influences, and for those who'd like to see a writing experiment conducted successfully.

I'm a big Mira Grant fan. That's an official, undeniable truth at this point. She has a way of illustrating the messy, knotted, and complicated relationships between characters with a history. It's evident in the dialogue and the way the characters move together and around each other. This was also fun because there were small nods to other works like Feed and Into the Drowning Deep in little turns of phrase and the way characters interact.

The shift from mystery to supernatural was sudden. There were a lot of small inconsistencies, but the jump from weird and uncomfortable to the walking dead and fish people was a lot. In a longer work, we could have had a better, more natural shift between them.

Unfortunately, only Kevin and Harlowe were particularly well-developed. Andy felt like a filler and Addison was simply an unrequited love interest, though she had a lot more personality than Andy. This could have been fixed by having narrator Harlowe spend more time one-on-one with Andy and Addison so we can get more than just Harlowe's wishful thinking and nostalgia to really establish their characters.

And the ending felt rushed.

Actual Rating: 4.5 Stars

In the Shadow of Spindrift House is a dark, atmospheric story about the ruthlessness of nature and a haunted house near the sea, as well as Scooby-Doo like group of mystery solvers who have aged out of cuteness and must decide what comes next. I don't want to say too much about the plot because it is a short novella, but it sucks you in with beautiful prose and dark imagery and keep you reading with the certainty that things are not going to end well. I do wish it had kept me guessing a little bit more because I feel like I knew where things were going from early on. Regardless, I very much enjoyed this little novella.

This is also coming out during Pride month and in signature fashion, the author delivers queer content as well. The main character is a lesbian with a long-time unrequited crush on her friend and co-detective. Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire always does a great job of casually weaving in characters who are queer or diverse in other ways and this is no exception. Another side character may or may not be asexual and deals with severe anxiety.

In terms of content, do be aware that this contains violence, depictions of blood and death, suicide, possession, and the death of an infant, and a creepy reference to necrophilia. I received an advance review copy of this book via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to Subterranean Press and NetGalley for ARC. Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire) is currently an author that is moving up my list of favorites. This story had lofty expectations, and while it was written well, it did not resonate with me. I did not get the character development and transitions that I expect from a book like this.

This was my first book by this author, but I kept hearing about this author on media sites, and just had to find out what it was all about
This story was interesting, but I'm not sure if the description really fit the book.
This first chapter was difficult to figure or. I had to go back & re read it, then after a few chapters, I re read it again. Maybe is just the author's style , though.
I can't think of much I really loved about the story, but I can't think if what I disliked either. It's been a few days since I finished & I keep thinking of the book.

This is a somewhat strange book in that it's not quite horror, not quite science fiction, not quite general fiction, but a mix of the three. The main character seems somewhat underdeveloped, but overall I did enjoy this book. If you like Lovecraft and Mira Grant, this is a good pick for a library collection with a strong demand for horror/sci-fi.

I really love Mira Grant and Subterranean Press but I ended up abandoning ship with this one. I could not get into this story no matter how many times I started the first chapter. I ended up being both bored and confused. Ye can't win them all I guess. Though it was very nice of Subterranean Press to give me a review copy. I hope this one finds its proper audience. Arrrr!

The Spindrift House has secrets. Secrets it is willing to kill for.

This is another short one from Mira Grant. I liked it, but didn't love it.

Mira Grant does Lovecraftian horror!

I enjoyed this, though nothing felt quite properly creepy to me until close to the end. Basically, the whole thing feels very Scooby-Doo up until a certain plot point, though the POV character, Harlowe, has had a more traumatic childhood than any member of the original Scooby Gang, and the story seems to take place in a world that accepts the existence of the supernatural to some degree. The Scooby feel seems intentional, but the veer from there into true horror could have come a little sooner. A longer format would have given the tale more time to breathe.

It pains me whenever I read a book by one of the few authors I actually consistently follow and it doesn’t work out for me. (Tone officially set for this review, right?) In the Shadow of Spindrift House has the worst first chapter I’ve ever read by Mira Grant. Twenty plus pages telling us that this house was No Good and that there Are Legends. It took me a while just to get through the first chapter because I would read a couple of pages, groan, put it down for a while and then come back to it.

When I finally managed to push through and got to the actual start of the story I was both relieved and mystified. This next chapter was the Mira Grant I knew. Where had that first bit come from? Thank goodness it was over and I was in for the sort of adventure I expected!

....Right?

Well... kind of?

I mean I liked the rest of it far better than the first bit. However, In the Shadow of Spindrift House was the weakest book I’ve read from Grant in a while. Possibly ever. And it had tentacles on the cover so my hopes were quite erect. Bother.

This is essentially the Scooby gang with a non-heteronormative grouping (and minus the Scooby) meets The Shadow Over Innsmouth with a mystery involving one of the Scoobies themselves. It has the potential to be a really good story but just falls a bit limp for me as it’s limited by its length. Coming in at about 200 pages, it just feels a bit...stubby. I wanted to love it, but it’s never good when there’s a sprint to the climax and a rush out the door after.

Overall, it was a decent enough read but there are so many other Mira Grant novels I would point new readers of her work at first.

An atmospheric novel that reads like a mashup of Lovecraft and The Haunting of Hill House with Grant's trademark sharp prose.

This group of mystery solving teenagers may have you thinking the story starts a lot like an episode of Scooby-Doo, complete with Scooby snacks, but the man in the mask won’t be what you expect. And the dog only has a brief appearance. It was an interesting story with relatable characters but as with any good short story you’re left wishing there was more. I was hoping for a little better explanation at the end but that was my only disappointment.
Thank you Netgalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this before its release!

This was an easy, breezy read, so much so that I finished it in a single sitting today. I'm always scrambling to snag a NetGalley copy of these Subterranean Press stories that Mira/Seanan writes; they are only available as special edition hardcovers that are gorgeous but cost a pretty penny once they're published. I devour any and everything that the author writes, and while I enjoyed it, it didn't quite live up to whatever expectations I had set up in my mind. I'm not a huge Lovecraft fan, but this being a very Lovecraft-esque novel, I decided to enjoy it for what it was. My biggest complaint is simply the fact that it felt very... normal for what the author typically writes. This novel was very light on the science aspect, but it also wasn't scary or horrific in the way I was hoping for. Aside from those personal complaints, it was still a fun read and I encourage die-hard fans to add this to their TBR.

Thanks to Subterranean Press and Netgalley for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Everyone who knows me or follows my reviews knows that I adore Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant. Her prose is magnificent, her worlds are deep and inviting (even when they're terrifying), and her characters become real on the page.

This story is no different. She paints a brief picture of the history of the house, a history of the three main characters outside of the narrator, and a history of Harlowe, inside whose head we reside. As their journey into Spindrift House deepens, so does the sense of foreboding at how the story will play out.

I won't spoil anything, but there seem to be some Lovecraftian elements to the story that you should be aware of - some people don't like that kind of story.

All in all, my biggest complaint is that this would have made a much better long novel than this quasi-novella length. I wanted a deeper, scarier, bigger story. But since Seanan has mastered the short story length, this one still had all the components needed to be complete and good. It just left me wanting that much more.

In the Shadow of Spindrift House seems like a blending of the storytelling of Mira Grant and Seanan McGuire, not quite fitting the expectation of either persona. It is horror, though, and that says Mira Grant. Certain aspects of the novella reminds me of a weird unholy blend of Gormenghast (if I actually liked Gormenghast) and Lovecraft, with the storytelling touch that is all Mira Grant.

This isn't as easily accessible as a more traditional Mira Grant novella. There is an interstitial that feels like Grant is stretching what it means to tell a Mira Grant story (although, Into the Drowning Deep did that, too). The introduction of Harlowe, her friends, and the central mystery of the novel is pure Mira Grant, and then the creeping existential dread and horror hits.

I made my acquaintance of the works of Seanan McGuire through Rosemary and Rue, then the “Incryptid” and “Ghost Roads” series. Mira Grant is Seanan’s horror-writing alias, and I’ve only recently dabbled in her work. Even though horror is not usually my cuppa I’m so glad I did! In the Shadow of Spindrift House is a strange little tale, novella-length if I’m not mistaken, a sort of demented love-child of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and the work of H. P. Lovecraft. And a gang of kid ghost-busters, now adults adrift in their own lives.

Spindrift House is haunted; that’s the only thing the denizens of “the half-ruined town of Port Mercy, Maine” can agree on. The land itself is valuable, but the title is clouded, and the documents that would establish claim lie within the strange Victorian edifice. The contesting families have offered a huge reward for the documents, but anyone searching for them must remain for the entire search. So our ghost-busters-now-grown embark upon this treasure hunt.

But the house isn’t safe, and neither is the ocean it overlooks (of course – this is Lovecraft territory, isn’t it?) The imagery shifts from “the sweet, beguiling whisper of the sea” to “the sound of the sea . . . like the beating of some huge, horrible heart” The house, too, is described in spine-chilling terms from “like it’s rotting from the inside out . . . the banister was slick under my fingers, damp with some scentless, unspeakable fluid . . .” “the house was moving in my veins, burrowing into my bones . . .”

The language, with its frequent references to rot and decay, the sense of creeping, nameless horror, are all evocative of Lovecraft’s work, but also Jackson’s psychological thriller, with its slow peeling-away of the veneer of normality and civilization to reveal most uncivilized secrets.

This is a quick read, full of shivery moments. Familiarity with either Lovecraft or Jackson isn’t necessary to enjoy it, although fans of either work will relish the references.

The usual disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book, but no one bribed me to say anything in particular about it. Although chocolates and fine imported tea are always welcome.

Harlowe UptonJones has found one last mystery for her best friends to solve before they age out of their teen detective club and have to start paying their own bills. There is a dispute over the ownership of a specific house in the tiny town of Port Mercy, Maine… a town that is slowly falling into the sea… and Harlowe thinks she, her foster brother Kevin, and twins Addison and Andy can solve it. All they have to do is stay in Spindrift House long enough to find the original deed. If they want to collect the reward, they cannot leave the house until they find the deed. And several other people who had tried to find the deed were found dead. But this is Harlowe’s last chance to keep her friends together and might be her last chance to solve the mysterious murders of her parents, which happened when she was four, and which still causes nightmares. Once they get to the house, though, everyone but Harlowe realizes there is something very wrong with Spindrift House. This is a delightfully creepy novella in the tradition of Shirley Jackson’s House on Haunted Hill.

Reviewed on Netgalley. I received a free copy in exchange for honest feedback.