Figaro

 I'll admit, I was predisposed to dislike Darcy Coates' Gallows Hill early on, as the narrator referred to her parents television from 1997 as an antique. While it did improve, it's not particularly among the best horror fiction I've ever read. (Once again, Goodreads lied.)

We spend the book following around the recently orphaned Margot Hall as she returns to her ancestral home on Gallows Hill following the death of her parents. What we know at the outset is that her parents sent her to live with her Grandmother at the tender age of eight, and she has no memories of her parents. Her parents died the same night or heart attacks in bed, their faces frozen in a rictus of fear. As the sole child, she now owns the cursed Winery of Gallows Hill,. built on a hill that stood in for the local gallows until the town incorporated. 

Most of the non seasonal workers live on site. 

Her first night, Margot gets awakened by what she assumes are service bells, and is convinced someone is in the house with her. She finds a tape with her name on it that has a puppet show her parents made talking about the family outside who don't like her. 

From there, we find out that indeed, the dead of Gallows Hill roam the grounds at night, and are prone to attacking people outside, or even breaking in to houses to get at the living. 

Fairly standard, right down to the curse. 

While the writing is actually pretty good, my problem came in with the fact I figured out the cause of the curse fairly early on, the logical issues with everyone just accepting zombies are something you get used to, and the absolute silliness of the finale. 

I mean, it's fun for spooky reading, but ultimately as forgettable as the long dead hanged men's names.

I guess it's a bone orchard?

Going through goodreads.com's best of 2018 list really expanded my To Be Read pile,a and the first one to clear the hurdle was Craven Manor by Darcy Coates.

We start with Daniel Kane, who more or less lives hand to mouth, while his roommate/cousin Kyle walks all over him. Daniel is more or less an Aladdin character, known for giving what little he has to those he perceives as needing it more. Which leads to an odd job offer received by handwritten note under the door, on the night Kyle decided to let Daniel know he's being downgraded to couch surfer, since Kyle's work friend needs a place to stay and can provide more than bill money.

The job is for groundskeeper at an abandoned estate a few miles out of town. One with literally no real road going to it. Indeed, it's a huge manor that's falling apart, although there is a groundskeeper cabin in the garden, not far from the family mausoleum. Pay comes in the form of two antique gold coins, delivered weekly in an envelope, and there are a few rules as part of the employment. Things like keep the curtains closed between midnight and dawn, don't open the tower, and never answer the door if someone knocks.

Given this is a horror novel of sorts, pretty much all of the rules get broken eventually, including the one about no strangers on the property, courtesy of a drunk Kyle who lets greed cloud his judgement.

However, most of the rules deal with the ghost of a little girl, Annalise, who's mother, Eliza, is locked in the tower. Annalise's brother, Bran, would be Daniel's erstwhile employer.

As Daniel becomes more involved in affairs of the estate, he discovers a small village in the surrounding wood where the residents have obviously never seen/read The Ruins, since to a being, all of them have been dead for a century and are covered in some kind of infectious black mold.

Which does set up the central conflict in the book, of whom Daniel should trust. His employer Bran, or out of date town gossip as to who really tore the door off the church and infected the townsfolk with mold? And who really was responsible for the death of Annalise?

It wound up being a different read than I expected, particularly since the setting and stories about Annalise suggested either gothic or vampire fiction. Instead, we get a fairly good ghost story without either a fairy tale ending or a really dark ending. I particularly liked that there is no real sense of place outside the manor, since the adjacent city is never named, and about all we see of it is Skid Row.

While not the best thing I've ever read, it is well written and engaging,which is a good thing.