It’s the 1970’s when we meet 13 year old twins, Tim and Abigail (Abi), who from a very young age have had a fascination with the paranormal, though it could be argued that it’s become more of an unhealthy obsession. Their knowledge of ghostly apparitions caught on camera, inspires them to create a ghostly photo of their own - a fake one of course, echoing the girls who said they’d taken photos of The Cottingley Fairies in 1917. But have they unwittingly attracted a malevolent entity or is it all in their imagination?

My thoughts on reading ‘The Apparition Phase’? - well, the psychological effects alone would make me unwilling to mess with the unknown!

There were some really strange and spooky events during the seances, (held of course in an old, dark, and creepy country house), and a heart pounding scene towards the end that left me breathless, not to mention terrified! A well written debut novel that is simply perfect for Halloween, or any other time of the year for that matter - as long you’re up for a spooky read?

This is a fantastically gripping page turner, I couldn’t put it down. It is so artfully written, it steers you through twisting plot turns to unthinkable conclusions, which you then have to revisit as the narrative further unfolds. Maclean pays homage to gothic tropes and unreliable narrators in the intertextual nods to Fowles’ ‘The Magus’ and Jackson’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House’, yet strikes fresh and unexpected notes. This will be utterly irresistible to fans of the genre and any reader seeking to lose themselves in an enthralling read. I can’t wait to read more from Maclean!

Meet Abi and Tim, siblings that spend their time inside instead of out and in the attic instead of the main house. It is what they do in the attic that causes pause. They love to read and re read ghost stories. Anything demonic and gruesome as well as pictures of ghostly apparitions. One day they decide to play a trick on someone and fake a ghost picture of their own. They are very excited when it turns out great. Except, there is something strange going on. Something is happening that is really scaring them. Could they have awoken a real spirit? This book is definitely a solid 5 +. The writer does an amazing job of holding your attention and writing at a pace that will not bore you or cause you to reread something. I was so enticed by the blurb and then enthralled in the storyline that I had a very hard time putting it down if even for a few minutes. I love this story as well as the characters that are so true and believable. I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to netgalley as well as the author/publisher for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

Apparition Phase is a wonderfully creepy 1970’s ghost story that I had to stop reading after dark. Precocious teenage twins, Abi and Tim, are obsessed with the supernatural. They spend most of their free time up in the attic, reading accounts of hauntings and the unexplained, and decide to create a fake ghost photograph to scare their classmates. They succeed, but with weird and horrifying consequences.

I was gripped by finding out what happens to Abi and Tim and why. I especially loved the sections with ghost-hunting in a Suffolk manor house, run by some deeply unethical paranormal researchers.

A well-deserved spooky five stars from me.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

In an old house in Suffolk, Tim and Abi like to spend their evenings in the attic, talking about ghosts; the scarier the better. They love to read ghost stories and pour over photos of “ghosts”. Then they decide they will take their own photograph of a ghost, a fake of course, but their little trick backfires when it appears they may have awoken a real spirit. A spirit that means them great harm. A creepy and literate ghost story

One of the best books I have read this year. The background of a dismal 70s suburban town is finely drawn and adds to the atmosphere.
Abi and Tim are self-sufficient, faintly superior twins who don’t need anyone else as they do their own research into spooky happenings around the country. A casual experiment on an unsuspecting classmate takes a very dark turn and then the unthinkable occurs, plunging Tim into a spiral of misery and anger.
He thinks he has found an outlet at Yarlings, an unprepossessing country house, where a team of young ghost hunters try and make contact with the unsavoury and cruel Tobias Salt. As you might expect, events very quickly become uncontrollable.
Like all the best ghost stories, everything that happens can be rationalised, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t immensely creepy at times. Perfect read as the nights draw in and we approach Halloween.

The Apparition Phase is a ghost story set in the 1970s which looks at the blurred lines between rational explanation and supernatural happenings. Tim and Abi are precocious twins obsessed with the macabre and strange, who see themselves as cleverer than everyone else at their dull suburban school. They decide to fake a ghost photo and test it on a girl from school, but what they don't realise is that doing so is setting off something larger, something that will become entangled in their lives as their teenage years go on, and which leads Tim to become mixed up with a strange haunted manor in Suffolk.

Maclean combines a depressing early 70s suburban landscape with an old, supposedly haunted house to create a ghost story that also looks at trauma and escape. Tim's narrative voice has a classic ghost story hindsight, and the narrative goes in a different direction to what I was expecting from the blurb, moving from weird adolescents to growing older amidst tragedy to ghost hunting and experiments. The characters who appear a bit later into the novel at the old house are an interesting collection, though it felt that from Tim's perspective you never really got beyond hints of their stories.

The atmosphere of this novel is effective, an example of using a kind of listless 70s landscape to explore the supernatural, growing up, and trauma (70s British gothic should be a genre by now, if it isn't already). There's a good balance between actual malevolent spirits and what is realistic troubles from non-supernatural life, making it a book less focusing on jumpy scares than a lingering sense of bleakness. This probably made it an unintentionally good read for the week before Halloween at a time when there's plenty of real life horrors going on.