‘Haunted: Perron Manor’ – Review
Haunted: Perron Manor fills you with Haunting on Hill House and Amityville Horror vibes as the two sisters try in their own way to make sense of the strange goings on in Perron Manor. With one of them seeing the haunting apparitions of the Manor’s previous inhabitants while the other is suddenly inflicted with a need to sleep walk into the creepy occult study, it becomes clear the house isn’t just inhabited by evil – it is evil.
Mountford leaves you enough breadcrumbs for your intrigue to elevate which, makes sense, given this is a 9 book series. That said, I would’ve preferred him to do a lot more with certain elements of the book. For instance, the creepy study, as much more could’ve been done here as when you get towards the second half of the book it seems relegated to just another room where another bunch of stuff has been found. Mountford also reinforces many times that the hauntings are preceded by a foul smell but at no point in the novel do any of the characters do anything to try and rid themselves of the odour that’s plaguing them.
There’s that and, while the rest of the book has been intelligently written, I’ve never really assigned myself to the belief that a ghost or spirit can physically do you harm. I’ve seen more fear in ghosts that can scare you to death or can cause you to run into a wall or fall down a flight of stares via a hallucinogenic dreamscape. It’s reasons like that which, for me, make this book all the more terrifying. Although, there’s still many areas of the characters and their pasts which I feel really need to be fleshed out.
