Leanne Olson

By Darcy Coates

Releasing September 6, 2022 from Poisoned Pen Press

Gallows Hill is a fun creepy story perfect to ease into Spooky Season.  

This is the second novel I’ve read by Darcy Coates and I’m really enjoying her cozy horror vibe.  I like the way she blends warm character relationships with some intensely creepy scenes.

I suggest going into Gallows Hill knowing nothing more than the basic opening: Margot Hull has no memory of her childhood with her parents, except for scars on her body and the knowledge that she was given away to her grandmother.  She returns home to inherit the family winery after her parents’ mysterious death.

This one’s a slow build, but once it gets going there are some incredibly tense scenes.  I highly recommend this one for a late night read (in the dark if you have an e-reader) to really enjoy scenes where Margot creeps around the Hull house trying to figure out what the heck is outside her window…or walking across her kitchen floor… I was *so* tense reading two major scenes in the middle of the novel.

There were a few aspects of the novel that didn’t totally work: Margot is a bit of an enigma as a character, and I wanted to know more about her current life, though I wound up invested in her by the end.  And the ending felt a bit simple.  But this book is so, so worth it for how much fun the suspense is.

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Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for my review copy of Gallows Hill.