This mystery follows Maggie MacKay as she returns to Kilmeray - a remote island off the coast of Scotland that she visited as a child after claiming to be a man named Andrew who had been murdered there. Now returning as an adult after the death of her mother, Maggie wants to find out the truth of if Andrew had actually existed and, if so, was he murdered. As Maggie begins her investigation, she receives ominous threats that have her questioning just how much she actually wants to find the truth. We're also following Robert, 20 years prior, who has recently moved to Kilmeray. He hopes that this new life on the island with his wife and son will give him the safety and community he craves. However, as he spends more time on the island, Robert starts to unravel and he believes his fate on the island cannot be escaped.

TW/CW: death of a child, drowning, Alzheimer's, suicide, death of a parent, mental health (bipolar)

The setting for this read was phenomenal. The remoteness of Kilmeray is established early and we're reminded often in many different ways which really added to the overall atmosphere of the read. We're told consistently about the dangers of the sea and since we're on an island, the sea is seemingly around all the time. We get a good sense of the small community there and we get a lot of important information while Maggie is walking around the island with various characters. The setting is so atmospheric and I loved how integral the setting is to the plot as well. So many of the plot points are directly connected to the elements and the sea that it just makes the whole story feel so cohesive. 

I loved the way the lore and supernatural elements were worked into the story. We get a whole range of elements from Maggie's mother being a psychic, Maggie's reincarnation claims as a child, Norse mythology, and the superstitions of sailors. I loved the way the different elements came together and overlapped in a way that felt very real. Like the people in these remote communities in these dangerous conditions don't necessarily care where the lore came from, only that they believe it will protect them on the boat when a storm blows in or will lead to a good fishing year. For some of these lore elements, the characters aren't entirely sure if these are good or bad things which I found really heightened the suspense of the story. I also loved how we do get some concrete explanation to some of the supernatural elements but others are left a little vague which made it feel overall more realistic in a way. Investigating the truth behind her childhood added an extra layer to the mystery because while Maggie was researching dates and facts and tracking down witnesses, she was also figuring out if her being the reincarnated Andrew was true or not. 

The mystery investigation was a little slow to get going but it paid off big at the end. Johnstone really took the time to lay out a solid foundation of this town and Maggie's own backstory and connection to this island. There are a lot of characters and places and they all play a role in the overall mystery investigation so it was good to get such a solid footing at the beginning. I really enjoyed following Maggie's investigation because she isn't like a lot of mystery MCs where they are super clinical or meticulous during the investigation. Maggie is coming to this island after some pretty significant changes in her life and as much as she wants answers, it is obvious that sometimes searching for those answers is also personally taxing so she isn't all go-go-go on the investigation. I also loved how we, and Maggie, think she has found the answer to the mystery about 75% of the way through the book but obviously there is more book to go so there is more to be revealed. The reveals in that last 75% are fantastic and I couldn't put the book down until I had finished.  

I wasn't entirely loving the dual timeline aspect until about halfway through the book for the simple reason that I just wasn't as interested or invested in Robert's timeline. We do find out the connection between Robert's timeline and Maggie's timeline fairly early on, but Robert's story was just not where I wanted to spend the time. It felt like his timeline was just following him around the island while he was being moody. But around the 50% mark, his timeline start to pick up and we can see some of the same interpersonal tension like we see in Maggie's timeline. I did enjoy how the timelines were only 20ish years apart which lets us see some of the same characters in each which is always something I find super interesting. 

Overall, this was a fantastic, atmospheric, and suspenseful read. I loved the way we get so many seemingly different pieces of this puzzle but they all come together so perfectly at the end. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC. Publication date is January 3, 2023

Wow, I'm not even sure where to start! This one was extremely unique. There were times I was loving it an totally enthralled and times I was shaking my head!

I loved the small town setting and the atmosphere was described so well, I could imagine myself there. I also really enjoyed learning so much about all the townspeople and I really didn't feel like I could trust anyone in the story. The plot itself is actually so deep and layered, I've never read anything quite like it before.

The two closest comparisons I can make are Once There Were Wolves and Scarlet in Blue. And it's still not much like either, just similar vibes!

It definitely was a slow-burn until maybe about 70% and then it picked up and I couldn't put it down. The ending surprised me for sure! Although, I had no idea where it was going most of the time!

Overall, I'm glad I read it but think this will be very hit or miss for people.

Thanks so much to Scribner for the chance to read and review this book! It is available today!

The Blackhouse by Carole Johnstone follows Maggie as she returns to an island that she visited as a child while claiming she was a reincarnated man who had drowned on the island years earlier. On her return, she seeks to figure out whether her claims were true and what really happened to the man who died.

This book was beautifully written and extremely atmospheric. Set in an isolated area of the Scottish Hebridean islands. I thought Johnstone did a great job of describing the setting in a way that I felt I could really imagine it. Plus, the atmosphere seemed to take on a character of its own throughout the book, increasing the feeling of tension and eeriness as well as the distrust between characters.

This is an odd book for me to review and rate. The beginning hooked me, but I felt the plotline was overall slow. It felt like a slog at times and one that I didn't always enjoy. That being said, by the time I got to the end of the book, I was thinking I wished I'd read it more carefully as I enjoyed the ending and the overall message of the story. That being said, I still feel like it ended up being a 2.5/5 for me despite my enjoyment of some portions.

I would recommend this book for those who enjoy gothic literature or who prefer atmospheric slow burn mysteries. I also felt like this book may appeal to those who generally enjoy literary fiction on occasion.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

This is one of the most atmospheric books I've ever read.

The story has dual POVs and timelines. Maggie is a young writer returning to an island where, as a 5yo girl, she claimed she was murdered in a previous life. Robert is an outcast farmer who disappeared under sketchy circumstances around the time when Maggie was born.

The first half of the book felt sluggish for me. The world building and atmosphere was amazingly eerie, but it felt like there was a lot of build-up to get to the point where the story started thriving. The twists, secrets, and characters were great. I enjoyed the Celtic and Norse mythology. The ending is bittersweet but left me wanting a little bit more.

The cover of this book grabbed my interest on NetGalley. I have a strong interest for stories that are based in Ireland/Scotland, this took place in a coastal village in Scotland. 'The Blackhouse' turned out to be a gripping read! Despite it being a slow paced mystery, it had enough complicated plot to keep me turning the pages. I enjoyed the beautiful descriptive writing of the Scotland setting. Another reason why I liked this read so much was the ambiance of the small town community. A great thriller read with some paranormal energy! Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Carole Johnstone for providing me with a complimentary digital ARC for The Blackhouse coming out January 3, 2023. The honest opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Robert Reid moved his family to Scotland’s Outer Hebrides in the 1990s. He craves safety and community, but he’s hiding a dark secret. Robert tries to fit in, but is always seen as an outsider. As the legendary and violent Hebridean storms rage around him, he begins to come apart, believing his destiny on the secluded island of Kilmeray cannot be escaped.

All her life, Maggie MacKay has known she was different. When she was five years old, she told the police that a man on Kilmeray—a place she’d never visited—had been murdered. Her claim drew media attention and turned the locals against each other, creating contention that had never been mended.

Nearly twenty years later, Maggie is ready to find out what really went on in her past, and what the islanders are hiding. But when she receives death threats, Maggie is forced to accept how much she is willing to risk to uncover the dark truths of her past.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book! This was my first by this author. I love books set on remote islands with small communities. The setting and characters were interesting. I think I enjoyed the first half of the book more. There was a mystery to unravel. I think the second half of the book wasn’t as clear and concise to me. There were definitely some confusing moments with who people were and I’m not quite sure about some of the revelations.

I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys island mysteries!

This tense and atmospheric novel is Carole Johnstone at her best! The nuance of characters, relationships and dynamics are well crafted and multilayered. The plot and several subplots within it work very well together and enhance the story. A twisty tale you can’t put down!

I read Mirrorland by Carole Johnstone last year and thought I remembered it as genuinely spooky and overall a good thriller so I was looking forward to another book by the same author. However, I should have double checked my review because I had many complaints about it and unfortunately this new book did not deliver either.

This book is set in the Hebridean islands of Scotland and as someone who has become mildly obsessed with all things Great Britain, I was very into it in the beginning. I kept reading in my head with a Scottish accent, channeling Jamie from Outlander as the main male character. I think I enjoyed the setting more than the plot, although I was a bit on the edge of my seat at first. There is a murder mystery with a bit of supernatural activity going on and I thought it was heading in a good place.

But the way things end is very anticlimactic. Johnstone’s writing definitely had the vibes but the plot just didn’t deliver. I was very disappointed in the conclusion of the mystery and then on top of it there is some good ole incest thrown in for who knows what reason. I despise incest, it is a big pet peeve that is hard for me to get over and the way it is used in this book was just so unnecessary. It was truly just gross and disturbing. I don’t want to read about that and in my opinion one of the best parts of the book, the romance, was ruined by this ending.

The ending really ruined it all for me. Although I enjoyed some parts of this book, the overall plot really soured it as a whole. Sadly, I probably won’t reach for this author again.

The Blackhouse takes place in a small village of Hebrides in Scotland . At 5 years old Maggie McKay was brought to this place by her mentally ill mother to make a movie about a possible murder of a man named Robert Reid. Her mother convinced Maggie she was Robert reincarnated. Twenty years later Maggie goes back to Scotland to find out the truth.
This book dealt with mental illness, mental breakdown, reincarnation, loss, guilt, revenge, romance, forgiveness, Norse mythology, Gaelic words
The Blackhouse is a slow burn and some chapters go back to 1990s when Robert was alive to the present.
The characters were alittle hard to follow with who was married to who or related to. The author did a beautiful job of describing the place. The imagery made me feel like I was there.

When Maggie was 5, she said that she was a man named Andrew who had been murdered by drowning. She was adamant that she was Andrew and she recognized the area of Kilmeray where a man did drown. A place she had never seen before.
Maggie is an adult and her life is a wreck. Her mother recently died and she is unsure what to believe about herself. She knows that she believed she was the reincarnated Andrew, but now? Maggie is determined to get to the bottom of that chapter of her life at least. She travels back to Kilmeray to ask questions of the locals. They had said there was no one named Andrew on the island, but everyone is nervous, and Maggie knows they are lying to her.
There was a man who drowned in a storm, like Maggie said when she was five years old. As Maggie starts to dig strange things begin to happen. Some one is following her. Someone is leaving dead blackbirds outside her door. Some one does not want the past brought to light.

Thank you to Netgalley and Scribner / Simon and Schuster for the opportunity to enjoy this gripping atmospheric thriller.

When Maggie's mother dies, she returns to Scotland and their divine community & scenery. (its really on display here- I cannot read this without a Scottish accent in my head) Quickly you find out, at the pub of all places, that Maggie believed herself possessed by a man named Andrew. Now, the way that it is approached in the book made my whole body tense, because it reads like someone being outed. It feels awkward and uncomfortable. I nearly put it down. The whole plot centers around Maggie trying to find Andrew's killer, the ghostly man that "possessed" her as a child. It walks a rail thin line honestly to me, of being like really Intriguing or enjoyable and being a bit insulting to queer folk in the first chapter and that left me with a bad taste in my mouth for a long time for reading. Like, oh she's just got a ghost pal, that's all fine and well. Lets find his killer. Cool. I'm super into it. He drowned. Name changes. Scottish intrigues. Awesome. There's literally a scene where Maggie has to be rushed from a bar for her own safety after being outed as Andrew. Its so weird and unsettling. It's in the first chapter. "You were once an Andrew" its like, this ain't the vibe fam. The more I talk about it the angrier I'm getting. Yes, its written beautifully. But, so are a lot of things that have aged like milk.

Set in a small village on a remote Scottish island, The Blackhouse is a vivid, dark, atmospheric mystery. As in Mirrorland, Carole Johnstone’s debut thriller, fantasy, myth and reality blend together so well that you don’t know what to believe.

Maggie has returned to the island to understand her past. When she was five, she announced that the villagers had killed a man named Andrew and that she was his reincarnation. She became a child celebrity, managed by her mother, a pseudo psychic who benefitted from her daughter’s success. There are many questions without easy answers. Why are the villagers so suspicious? What are they hiding? Maggie has been mentally ill and hospitalized. How real are her memories? Did her mother influence her for publicity. Did Andrew even exist?

The Blackhouse is beautifully written with a deliberately slow moving plot and flawed characters. The wild weather on Kilmeray is a character itself! 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Scribner and Carole Johnstone for this ARC.

I loved this book so much more than I thought I was going to at the start. The writing was fantastic, and truly brings you to the site of an isolated, Scottish island village, that is consistently battered with storms off the sea.

Maggie McKay repeated one thing over and over again as a child, "I am Andrew McNeil, and I was murdered." This leads her to travel to the Scottish Island of Kilmeray as an adult, where she suspects Andrew McNeil died, in an attempt to uncover the answers she seeks, and the secrets that the islanders are hiding.

I am a sucker for small, creepy child reincarnation stories. I find it both horrifying and fascinating when you hear about children declaring they were someone else in a past life. So that concept hooked me right from the beginning.

The writing was seriously phenomenal. There were no "eye roll" moments in this book. You truly felt you were right there on the island, with the descriptions of the atmosphere. You felt all the feelings that Maggie was feeling. At the end, when everything was revealed and explained, I felt like I was so engrossed in the life and culture on the island, that I understood why everyone did what they did.

- Why Not Five Stars
This is really nitpicky on my part. I just had a tough time getting into it, in the very beginning. The writing is at a much more advanced level than most of the thrillers I end up reading. Overall, it was a really great book.

I was unable to finish this book and thus will not be posting a full review. I just could not get into the book no matter how hard I tried. Thank you for the opportunity.

I’ll be honest: I wavered on the rating for this book, because it verges on bringing too many things to the table and then trying to make it all work together, like a stew with too many ingredients and you don’t quite know what to make of it at first, or a piece of art that’s rather chaotic and you can’t get a good look at it unless you step away from it an study it for a bit.

That’s what I had to do, in the end. I had to marinate on it a bit because I liked the book, but when I finished it I needed to let it sit for a bit and figure out whether or not it was going to be a 3 or 4 star book.

In spite of the fact this book’s plot is focused on and unreliably narrated by a woman named Maggie, the book itself doesn’t feel character-driven. I think that’s perhaps because a million things about Maggie are alluded to, suggested about, and hinted at, but we never get to know Maggie as a person in the present. All we get are flashes, and it makes her feel like a collage of a character instead of a whole character, which is what I would’ve preferred to see. It would’ve lent dimension to our unreliable narrator and more weight to her motives and intent during the story.

Instead, this book’s main characters are the island of Kilmeray in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides and a dead man named Robert Reid, and Maggie is only one of many supporting characters of various types (none of which are without their secrets) taking second place behind the storm beset, weathered, hardened, unforgiving, grim, isolated, and ancient island of Kilmeray and the mysterious story of what happened to that superstitious man with almost more secrets than he could bear.

This is what kept me wavering in my rating: I felt the book should’ve been driven by and about Maggie. I felt she, as a character, was far more interesting than Johnstone was writing her and deserved better than the collage she was made into. It’s almost as if Maggie were simply an avatar to tell the rest of the story through, and that lack of dimension in a FMC doesn’t feel right to me.

On the other hand, Johnstone sure knows how to write about the unforgiving and harsh Outer Hebrides in all their craggy, green, pastoral majesty. The fierce, howling winds, the ice cold downpours, the soggy and sucking peat bogs, the large waves crashing like thunder against the cliffs, the way the clouds can be so dark and heavy every day it can seem like it’s constantly night, and the beautiful and wild flora that can only grow in such harsh conditions.

And then there’s the haunting, tragic, and awful tale of Robert Reid, which is something I can’t write about without the huge spoilers.

So, in the end, after some marinating and rumination, I decided this one was going to be a four star. Not because of the thriller aspects of the book, but because of the more ghostly, gothic, speculative, and folk horror aspects. I think those aspects of the book are what raise to the surface the best.

Thanks go out to NetGalley and Scribner for granting me early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review.

File Under: Gothic/Psychological Thriller/Crime Thriller/Ghost Story/Speculative Fiction/Folk Horror

This book has a lot that I really liked, but also a fair amount that I disliked. Overall I'm giving this 4 stars, but I think it lands somewhere between 3.5-4 stars.

What I liked: This is a dark, broody, atmospheric read that was so immersive. I could see the island, feel the rain, and get the same goosebumps our main character did when things got creepy. And I really liked the creepiness! Everything was described in such a vivid manner, that I felt like this would be a great movie or tv series. The mystery was also great and I was very pleased with the twists.

What didn't work for me: Okay my main complaint is there are SO many characters. They remark how remote the island is and how few people live there, but OMG I could never keep anyone straight. I strongly regret not taking notes to remember who was who. I think we needed less people, or they needed to be more memorable and/or introduced more slowly. The book basically begins with our main character walking into a bar and getting introduced to the whole village when I am just getting myself oriented in the plot and meeting our main character plus a few side characters. Then throw a pub full of new people at me with a few sentences to tell me who they are, and I'm just not going to remember. I kept returning to these pages to see who all these dang people were!

My other minor complaint is that this book is just slow, and I had a hard time making myself pick it back up. I don't mind a slow burn mystery if it's building up to an exciting finale, which it did somewhat at the end. But some of the middle just felt so bogged down that I struggled getting through it.

But even with those complaints, the plot and the mystery are really great! This was a memorable read that I could not predict, which is always a win for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Scribner for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

I tried to like it but at the end I was not enjoying it I think it is not my cup of tea.
Thanks to the editor and Netgalley for the ARC

She did it again!! This book is a slow descent into madness truth and lies that lives up to my love of Mirrorland. I will be reviewing a physical copy of this book on my social media platforms but thank you agin to Scribner for the digital arc

I was so excited about this novel since it takes place in Scotland and had a thriller/mystery element in the past and present.

Maggie MacKay is the main character, who when she was 5 years old believed that she was a reincarnated man, who was murdered. Her mother brought her to the island to track down who the person was and if she was actually this man. The island treated them horrendously and eventually they left.

Now, Maggie is returning to the island to answer the question if she was actually this man or if her mom made her believe in something that was never true. The islanders are again not happy that she is there but eventually their minds change and she becomes part of the island.

The mystery was interesting for Maggie to find out if the man was real, if he was murdered, and who committed the murder.

This story had some interesting aspects to it and every time something new happened it felt suspenseful but the danger died off quickly. It never felt like there were true stakes at hand with the dead crows being left outside and inside her house or the murderer on the loose around the island. It fell short for me on a lot of aspects and I needed it to be pushed a bit more. It was a good read and I enjoyed the characters and setting a whole lot.

The blackhouse was a slow-burning suspenseful mystery. Maggie goes to do a deep dive into her past and discovers that some secrets shouldn't be discovered.

A dark and gritty thriller this one is a slow burn but worth it for the mysterious ending.