Full review to come on Goodreads and Amazon. Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for a review copy.

This book was creepy and haunting. It was everything I was looking for in a horror book. I would definitely recommend reading this story, if you are looking for the same vibe. I rated this 4 stars.

Spooky season is upon us! This one is a bit late but I am finally catching back up and this fit the mood perfectly. Creepy farm in the middle of nowhere with some supernatural bits going on. My prediction early on was pretty close so there were not a ton of surprises but I enjoyed it and it wraps up nicely. Unreliable narrators are always fun to read because you just honestly have no idea if they are crazy or not and our main female lead definitely had some things going on that kept me questioning everything. So although it was predictable I would give this a 3.5. A good start to my spooky mood reads TBR for September.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an copy in exchange for a review!

Wow!

I thought I was just getting a creepy house book, which I live for, but this was so much more. It’s ghost story, murder mystery, couples’ drama, and fucked up families.

If you vibe with my taste in books, you should read this.

In this story, Emily and her husband move from San Francisco to a farm in rural Nebraska, hoping for a fresh start after loss. But instead of peace, Emily uncovers a haunting history tied to their new home—missing girls, mysterious deaths, and strange, unsettling occurrences that blur the line between reality and something much darker.

I found the farm setting deeply atmospheric, which made the tension and creeping dread even stronger. From the eerie barn to the whispers in the cornfield, the story pulled me in right away. And that cover? It gives off the perfect spooky vibes. This is such a great pick for spooky season!

I received a complimentary copy of this book for review. All opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed the writing in this book and the eerie atmosphere that was created. Trying to figure out what was happening and what was real or not kept the pacing going for me. I did feel like there were some loose ends that didn’t come together and I wasn’t a huge fan of the abrupt ending. But I would read something by this author again in the future.

Amazing novel. Conradt's storytelling keeps readers on edge, delivering unexpected twists that make this novel hard to put down. As author Kate Wiley notes, it's "a triumphantly creepy novel that you'll want to keep in your freezer when you go to sleep." The Farmhouse is a page-turner, perfect for fans of suspense and psychological thrillers. The unsettling atmosphere and complex characters create a truly immersive reading experience.

DNF @ 15%

I was intrigued by the premise, but struggled to get invested in the story. I tried a few times to come back to it but ultimately decided to move on.

This book was quite frustrating. I wanted so badly to feel sunk into Midwest spookiness but it was impossible to maintain the unease of any part of the mystery because of the endless minutiae of pop culture references that make it hard to find this read evergreen, or the unnecessary repetitions of coffee and running. While those were important to Em’s character and set her in what she was doing in her daily life, it wasn’t used effectively to me to move the story forward. The momentum was too clunky for me, I couldn’t maintain any serious intrigue when we got a wink of something scary going on and then there’s a stark come down for a few chapters.

Thank you NetGalley and Poison Pen Press for the eARC.

This book suffered from useless minutiae descriptions. This book could have been so much shorter. For example, why did we care about the librarian visiting California for like two paragraphs? She turned out not to be that significant. It all made being in Em’s mind unbearable. I found myself skimming all those minute details, which was a lot of the time. It honestly bogged down the whole point of the book, which was the mystery. When it actually got to the suspense and mystery, it was actually intriguing. It kept going back and forth whether she was an unreliable narrator and who to trust, etc. I kept reading to find out the truth. I feel like when we did, it was kinda anticlimactic. I really liked the message on misogyny. Her grief over her mom’s passing was also well done, because we all grieve differently and her mother was her whole world and I really felt her pain in losing her.

This was full of dread and suspicion, set on a remote farm in Nebraska. I liked this well enough but it felt like there were quite a few plot holes or things not explained or forgotten. I was a little let down because the premise of this was great.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Publication Date: June 17th, 2025

Synopsis:

When Emily Hauk's mother dies, it's time for her and her husband, Josh, to finally leave San Francisco. A farm in rural Nebraska is everything they want for a fresh start: clear skies, low costs, and distance from the grief back home.

They should have asked why the farm was for sale.

Three years ago a teenage girl went missing from the farm. Soon afterward, the girl's mother mysteriously died. The deeper Emily digs the more stories she uncovers of women connected to her new home who've met their own dark ends.

With each passing day Emily's sanctuary slips further away. The barn seems to move throughout her property as though chasing her. Her mother's favorite music drifts across the cornfield. She swears she saw blood in one of the farmhand's trucks. And the screams that wake her are not fox howls, no matter how many times her husband says they are. If she wants to claim this place as her own she'll have to find out the truth before whatever watches from the cornfield takes her, too.

Review:

The summary of this sounded interesting and I've been on the lookout for new horror titles this year. We're following Emily and Josh, a married couple who've just moved from California to a farmhouse in middle of nowhere Nebraska. She starts to notice odd happenings about the house and the story goes from there.

I have to stay, the dynamic between the two was so frustrating. Every time Emily told Josh about something he was quick to blame outside sources or just not outright not believe her. It definitely made me suspicious of him. I will also say that the pacing of the book is pretty slow. Emily's basically on a mission to find out all she can about the barn and the town is less than forthcoming. But I maintained interested throughout (for the most part) because I have always enjoyed the whole unreliable narrator trope - never knowing if what's going on is real or some type of delusion. There was a creepy aspect about the barn I found unique and chilling.

I wanted more suspense out of it, maybe some type of bigger reveal. Overall I enjoyed Conradt's writing and I would be interested in her future work.

This was a very slow book. I honestly only kept reading to find out why the barn was moving exactly. I wanted to read this since it was listed as a horror story and a thriller. It had some horror aspects for sure, ghosts, creepy screaming in the middle of the night, stuff like that, but it was definitely more a mystery. Was it good? Not really but I kept reading it 🤷‍♀️

A young couple, Emily and Josh, moves to Nebraska, buying a farm house to enjoy some quiet away from a life in San Francisco. Emily's mother has recently passed and she's been having a hard time with it. And now in the new house, she's starting to hear music out in the barn late at night, hearing voices, and noticing that the barn is moving closer to (or sometimes further from) the house. She's not sleeping, she's still grieving her mother, her husband isn't being supportive, it's all a mess. There's lots of story pieces but nothing feels like it goes together. And when I was at 95% of the book and there still wasn't any resolution, I wasn't that surprised. It did wrap itself up, not neatly but well enough. There's lots of odd plot holes and Emily seems like an unreliable narrator most of the time. Josh is the "perfect husband" but then goes on sudden business trips, pushes sleeping pills on her, and generally seems to think she's just losing her mind.

I'm not sure that I would recommend this book. It was slow to the point that it dragged and kept dragging through some random stuff, not focusing on anything too long. It just felt disjointed, like the author didn't know where they wanted to go and then bam, ending! There was one ghosty scene that was very good and I wish the book had more flashback things like it definitely would've pushed it into the horror genre a bit more. Instead overall it was very meh.

Thank you to Netgalley and Kensington Publishing/Dafina for an advanced copy of this book. I am leaving this review voluntarily. 

A young couple, a fresh start in the countryside after a life together in the city, an old farmhouse, wide land and fresh air, fields of corn and lowing cows. A looming, derelict barn that maybe moves around the property. A missing person and a ghostly presence. Our main character is a woman named Emily; she is a runner and has adjusted to country life slowly. She paints the house and begins gardening. She purchases chickens and jogs with the sunrise. Her husband is named Josh. They both work from home and Josh often has business trips that take him away for days at a time. Overall, you get the sense that this move was needed for the sake of their relationship and peace of mind. 

Early on, Emily shows signs of anxiety and insomnia. I understand her misgivings with the barn and her creeping obsession with it, but the disordered sleeping was Capital S Serious. Spooky occurrences start creeping in and this further interrupts her already bizarre sleep schedule. I did find the spooky aspects interesting - the single light in the barn loft that turns on by itself some nights, the disembodied whispers in the cold dawn, trickling phantom touches.

I enjoyed most of this book.  We get a good idea of how loving and affectionate Emily and Josh were at the beginning of their new life, the growing tension between them matches what is going on with Emily and the barn. Emily's fixation with the barn sometimes overshadows their marital issues, but it presents a good opportunity to entwine Emily's declining sanity with her devolving relationship with Josh. The mystery often felt too big for Emily for the majority of the book; she suspects the farmers working on their land of foul play related to missing girls in the area, the barn is not exactly where she remembers it being, the steps from her runs do not always match what she knows should be a definitive distance. She witnesses what is possibly a farmhand disposing of a body but no one believes her and her husband thinks she's not getting enough rest (which, valid). What is the cause of all this? Growing mold? Poisonous berries? Vengeful spirits seeking revenge? Or the tale as old as time: women never taken seriously, their concerns ignored and explained away as paranoia and mental instabiity. It was a sad development but the book held true to that common disastrous error. Women are never believed and ultimately, women must rely on other women to get anything done.  

There was something just a little bit off with the pace of the book and the more intense, promising plotpoints were drowned out by superfluous detail and minutiae (did we have to know so much about her marathon training and communications with coworkers?). The whole subplot about her mom and their old house? I don't think the story would suffer without that. I think this was a decent attempt at a haunted house story and will work for new readers of horror. 

3/5 stars

This was a great book. It is kinda a slow build at the start but I thought it was a fast paced read. It was suspenseful and it has a supernatural dark story too. Josh and Emily are looking for a fresh new start and a better life together when they leave California and move to a beautiful farmhouse in Nebraska after Emily’s Mom passes away. Things are going good between them but Emily starts to notice and feel something is not right particularly with the barn on their farm land. She decides to do some research about the Farmhouse and barn and let’s just say every family and property always has some type of secrets. Thank you to Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for giving me the opportunity to receive a complimentary ARC of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

Unfortunately, this was a DNF for me about 35% into the novel. At first I was really liking it, but it felt like pages and pages passed, and yet we weren’t really progressing the story. It felt like we were making the same points over and over again. I think if you enjoy an atmospheric slow burn story you might enjoy it—it was just too slow burn for me.

I am a devoted reader of rural domestic suspense, especially when the house feels like a character. and THE FARMHOUSE delivers on that front in the creepiest, most satisfying way. Set in the quiet stretches of Nebraska, this novel follows a couple relocating from the chaos of San Francisco after the main character Emily’s mother dies. She’s clearly grieving, but it’s not just her emotions that are unsettled—the house itself seems to be hiding something. And the people who lived there before? Let’s just say they’ve left more than a few traces behind.

Chelsea Conradt does an excellent job weaving themes of grief and gaslighting into a genuinely eerie atmosphere. The writing is haunting, and though I found the ending somewhat predictable, the journey was more than worth it. I flew through it.

I recommend for readers who love a haunted house with layered social commentary—and for those of us who know that sometimes the scariest things are the ones that follow us home.

Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for the advance copy. All opinions are entirely my own.

They say the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. And I feel like that encompasses this book. A couple hundred pages of repetition and no character depth or growth. *** Potential SPOILERS incoming:*** The husband whose only personality was telling his wife she’s wrong when she sees something amiss. The farmer who is terrified of the house and boys — why? A vengeful ghost with trust issues — what happened before her death to make her feel that way?

I wanted to really like this, and I certainly didn’t “dislike” it, but I felt like less time could have been spent running in corn fields and walking back and forth from the creepy barn, and more time developing characters to make the payoff that much more satisfying.

This book can be summed up in a few lines: woman drinks coffee, runs in corn. Here and there, feeds chickens.

I was really looking forward to this one. It had everything I usually love: a creepy farm, a dark history, and a woman trying to uncover the truth. But it just didn’t land the way I hoped.

The setup is great. Every woman who’s lived on the farm has died, and now Emily is starting over there after her mom’s death. Strange things start happening and the tension slowly builds, but it never fully grabbed me. The pacing felt off, and I didn’t feel connected to the characters. It’s an eerie story with a solid concept, but it didn’t quite deliver for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

First off, I absolutely LOVED Emily. She was the perfect narrator and added a bit of humor into a book that was oozing suspense, mystery, and grief. This was such a quick read! Moments my breath actually caught because the suspense was too much. It was a movie in my head the whole entire time (PS this would make an excellent movie IRL).
The ever-present theme of women being silenced and ignored was STRONG. And added sadness and heaviness. I love books that make me feel things!

The only negative I have is the very end. Why did Emily and Josh have to divorce? I mean, I get it. But it made me sad they couldn’t work through things.