Having read Andrew Hurley's first book, The Loney, also as a galley proof, I was excited to get the chance to suggestive read Devil's Day early too. I wasn't disappointed - this author is shaping up to be a fine practitioner of what I think of as old-fashioned horror, in the manner of Susan Hill's ghost stories, say, or The Wicker Man or Rosemary's Baby in cinema.

The setting is a tiny, relatively isolated farming community in Lancashire consisting of only three sheep farms scraping a living from the harsh landscape of moors and river, set some way away from the nearest village. The three families are close-knit, but there are trouble-makers in the village who have long been perceived as an irritant at best, and a threat at worst, with rumours of petty crime, intimidation and bullying in both adults and children. There are stories of mysterious deaths, murder cover-ups, sheep being killed, and demonic possession; local lore tells tales of the Devil having been conjured up on the moors in a ritual in the past, and having been active in the area since, jumping from animals to humans and bearing responsibility for all the ills that befall the village. The Devil's Day is an annual ritual aiming to entice the devil down from the moors and lull him to sleep by the fire to stop him making mischief as the sheep flocks are brought down from the higher ground for the winter months.

To all this returns John Pentecost with his pregnant wife Kat, called back for the funeral of his redoubtable grandfather and to help with the annual sheep round-up. John has been making a living as a teacher in the south, but the pull of his community is strong and now that his grandfather is gone and his mother long dead, his father is left to manage the farm alone. John wants to remain, although Kat has other ideas. As events unfold, the menace gradually builds up, carefully guarded dark secrets come to light, and what seemed at the start and from the point of view of educated outsiders to be nothing more than village folklore now starts to take on a more sinister air. Is Satanic evil or mere human darkness at play here? As in all the best horror stories, it is up to the reader to decide.

John Hurley excels at the slow build-up of tension, at creating an atmosphere of menace that never lets up, and at maintaining an ambiguity which leaves the reader wondering and compulsively reading on. This is a book that rewards patience and is best enjoyed in a dimly lit room with a fire burning...

The concept of the landscape as a character is a fascinating one. But the characters motivations in this were nonsensical. This completely failed to immerse me in the story. Also, what is it with this year and killing of farm animals in fiction? The book was a slow burn, and while it did create a gradual sense of unease, the characters weren't interesting enough to carry my interest as long as they needed to.

Disappointing read. Whether it was just the subject matter, I couldn't gel with, but I didn't feel like there was any point to this story. Was expecting a bit of a mystery/thriller but got a story of a man going back to his childhood home and reminiscing about the "devil" doing evil deeds that really didn't seem that evil! Then a few little surprises when the story comes to modern day, but nothing really to hold my interest. Very dull. Sorry.

An unusual storyline about folklore and the devil!! I must admit having finished this book a week ago, I still can't decide whether I liked it or not. Yes I did think about putting it down, but I found myself wanting to know what was going to happen. I could not understand for the life of me why Kat would stay with her husband, moving to the Endlands just because her husband told her that was what they were going to do!! All in all not the riveting book that I thought it would be.

Having enjoyed immensely The Loney with the quiet and isolated Lancastrian coast, I was hoping to be equally enthralled by Devil's Day where John Pentecost returns to the place of his childhood, the rural farming community of the Briardale Valley known as the Endlands. On this trip he is accompanied by his wife Katherine who is heavily pregnant with their first child. The reason for the journey is to attend his grandfather's funeral affectionately known to everyone as Gaffer.

Whereas The Loney had a great story to tell with a very unsettling conclusion, I found Devil's Day a rather laborious exercise and almost give up at the half way point. It is really a story of rituals, local folklore and introverted hillside sheep farmers. Legend has it that once a year the Devil returns to the valley in an attempt to unsettle the community and cause mischief amongst the sheep. By telling tales, regurgitating stories from the past, and redrawing the boundary lines it is hoped that the Devil can be kept isolated and the people of Endlands kept safe for another year. Endlands is that rare thing a place separate from the intrusion of the modern age entrenched in tradition and a population willing to fight for independence to maintain their link with the past. John Pentecost is drawn to the beauty and harshness, his wife Kat feels very uneasy as she is seen as an outsider and viewed with suspicion; tolerated more than accepted. There is however one acceptation, Grace Dyer, a young and rather consused teenager who with her odd power of prediction forms a very disquieting attraction towards a pregnant Kat.

The story is somewhat confusing and at times hard to follow as we view Endlands both in the present and the past. The narration is through the eyes of John Pentecost and we meet him in the present, in the company of his son Adam, trying to instil him the ways of his ancestors then, without warning we are immediately in the past again with a pregnant and suspicious Kat. Whereas The Loney used the landscape to great affect creating a wonderful modern horror story Devil's Day has some good ideas and moments played out through the characters of John, Kat, Adam, Grace and Dadda but essentially little seems to happen and ultimately leading to a somewhat predictable conclusion. Many thanks to netgalley and the publisher John Murray for a gratis copy in exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written.

Devil's Day is full of atmosphere and it's setting is so well described you feel as though you're walking the dark, haunted hills yourself. The town, the community, the landscape share a depth of loneliness and unfriendliness. When John Prescott and his wife Kat come home for John's grandfather's funeral, there are mixed feelings on every side but when John wants to stay to help his father gather the sheep from the mountain, these feelings are brought to the fore. His struggle with his new life and the haunted, devil-ridden days of his old life comes to a climax on Devil's Day.

I was not sure what to make of this book and the stories told within it.

Somehow the stories were about times too recent for such mythology.

And I was worried bout in-breeding in the village as it was such a cut-off community.

it seemed to me that the countryside described was more like Cornwall or deep Somerset than the Pennines, or even the Lake District - but maybe the Borders? Certainly the Norse raiders got there..

So whilst worrying about all these, perhaps irrelevant items, i lost the plot. Literally and failed to finish the book.

Every autumn, John Pentecost returns to the farm where he grew up to help gather the sheep down from the moors for the winter. Usually his grandfather, known as the gaffer, tells tales that always begin with the devil and local rituals are believed to keep the sheep safe over the winter, but this year the gaffer has died and John has brought his wife along where they will both attend the funeral.

This story is a slow burner. It starts out following a lot of what looks like conversation with no real point, though eventually it begins to reveal some of the local happenings that suggest the town really is plagued by the Devil. There is some Yorkshire dialect which was very well done, though I wonder whether it will translate well to people who have never heard Yorkshire people speak. Beginning sentences with "It were..." might look like bad grammar, but it's part of the local colour.

The one thing I found difficult was that there are no chapters, though there are a few section breaks starting nearly halfway through. It's one never-ending read with the occasional skipped line where I could decide to use my bookmark and continue later. The thing is, the lack of any real action in the first 75% of the book didn't inspire me to want to keep reading. It's like a snapshot of life in a rural Yorkshire Parrish with a dark secret or two. I finished wondering what was the point of the story and still waiting for something to happen, especially as there were some good hints of foreshadowing.

Not a lot of action, but the writing was good.

Devil’s Day is a book full of tension and foreboding. Following the death of his grandfather, the Gaffer, John returns home to his family farm in the Endlands to help with the Gathering and mark Devil’s Day, a day when the local farming families join together in a tradition meant to tempt the devil down from the moors to keep their flock safe. The book is full of local traditions that are presented initially as whimsical, rather like some of the traditions around Christmas, but are quickly revealed to have dark undertones. The story jumps around in time as the author gradually reveals to us how deeply intertwined the histories of these characters are with the figure of the devil, and the realisation that so many of them are hiding something.

I had trouble sometimes remembering who was who (some of the local farming family members seemed almost interchangeable) and at times wondered if that was deliberate, as the sense of disorientation it creates mirrors the experience of John’s wife Kat, visiting the Endlands for the first time.

Devil’s Day is an excellent and subtle horror story, working slowly but surely to create a sense of unease that lingers long after the last page.

I remember from reading his first novel, The Loney, that the author has a talent for creating atmosphere and was delighted to see more of the same here. The open moorland, vulnerable to extremes of weather, the often brutal life of farmers in these hills and valleys, the superstitions clinging on in an isolated setting - all come together to make a striking impression. Added to this is a creeping sense of foreboding and danger, fuelled by unexplained incidents, scary folklore and guarded secrets. Tension is high, not least between John and Kat and their very different ideas of ‘home’ and community. Terrifically well done.

To give a flavour of the tone:

‘Living on the farms was one endless round of maintenance. Nothing was ever finished. Nothing was ever settled. Nothing. Everyone here died in the midst of repairing something. Chores and damage were inherited.’

‘But a farmer in the Endlands was only ever a custodian. Nothing ever belonged to anyone, but was always in the act of being handed on.’

If I have a niggle at all, it’s in the pacing of the story. The first half and more progresses very slowly. I loved all the detail of day-to-day life and preparations for annual celebrations, so much so that I was rather taken aback by the speed of events towards the end. I also felt a little cheated by some of the characters’ development. The tensions between them that so dominated most of the novel seemed just to vanish on the wind. I would recommend, though, especially as winter approaches for us all.

What with not having been completely convinced this author's The Loney was for me, both despite and because of its great success, I am glad I turned to this book first. It has a great sense of mood, some wonderfully quotable nature writing, and a well-achieved balance of the everyday character of rural life and something much less mundane. However, it's not without flaws - I didn't get a grip on many of the characters in the tiny, remote community, and the book seems to be foreshadowing so much and not fully delivering - the constant tap, tap of something fully devilish wasn't ultimately borne out, to my mind. For one thing, there was scope for Adam being a penance, and a different book would have a galling inevitability behind the wife's staying, when here she just kowtows like no real person would. Still, while it's not the best in this genre it is pretty enjoyable - well, to the extent I'd give it three and a half stars.

John and his new wife, Kat, go back home to his father's farm in deepest Lancashire to attend the funeral of his grandfather. Kat thinks that they are only there temporarily but John wants to stay in the Endlands with Dadda and the other two families. Things are not always all they seem in remote communities and the Devil has shown his hand. When Dadda and John get stuck in the snow, things definitely take a turn for the worst.

I enjoyed this book but it was actually quite hard to read. The writing is beautiful and the language clever and beguiling but the setting was so dark and the families and their lives so starkly bleak that it was not a novel one could sit down to in one sitting, more one that needed to be contemplated properly after every session.

Nevertheless, having digested it properly, I definitely enjoyed this book and would recommend it, although it certainly isn't easy reading!

A feast of vocabulary and imagery evoking a gothic ghost story about the myth of the Devil in a rural landscape. I knew from the start that I would be poring over lavish prose, thoughtful and insightful use of words and subsequently a slow unravelling of characters. This was going to be an exquisitely rich and satisfying read.

John and Kat have returned to the Endlands to help to bring in the sheep from the moor now that the Gaffer (John’s grandfather) has died. Kat brings with her the promising news that she is pregnant, but although she effortlessly tries to fit in, she is still left out in the cold.

This tale of folklore cloaks the reader with a sense of the values and beliefs of the people of the Endlands, the atmospheric, raw ruggedness of the landscape and how the two are woven together through myths told over and over to each other.

The follow up to the Costa Book Award winning The Lonely is Devil’s Day by Andrew Michael Hurley. This is a dark and atmospheric creepy novel based in a valley called the Endlands and the bleak landscape mirrors the horrors that locals hide.

It is autumn and John Prescott has returned to the valley to gather his sheep from the moor for the winter, he has been doing this for many a year but this time something is different, he has brought with him his wife who is pregnant. Now his grandfather (the gaffer) has died and also this is the time for the annual Devil’s Day. Some of the locals still talk and carry out the slaughter of a lamb this according to folklore will keep the devil away. John is arranging the funeral for ‘the gaffer’ while some of the locals from this bleak outpost are preparing the local Devil’s Day ritual.
It was about 100 years ago that the locals believe the devil came to Endlands and took a sheep as disguise during the cold snowy winter and a number of mysterious deaths occurred. Now the locals carry on the tradition of Devil’s Day in songs and the taking of the first lamb of the season.
A dark and sinister story of the past and present traditions and folklore. For Katherine she longs to get this visit over with and head back to her own life away from the bleak moors and valleys. She does not belong here with past feuds and their lifestyle. They have a child one the way and she wants their normal life back.
The novel started slowly and it builds as you get further in to the story and there is tension and it builds as the story progresses. Hurley can really tell a creepy tale and this is just as good as his debut novel. If you liked The Lonely then Devil’s Day will be for you. This is not a horror story but it is dark with secrets of the past and its traditions and local feuds that threaten. The is a sense of unease that burns away through the storyline. Andrew Michael Hurley delivers with Devil’s Day and is a worthy read for these dark nights. RECOMMENDED.

Thank you to for John Murray Publishers the advanced review copy of Devil’s Day.
304 Pages.

Claustraphobic small village tale of a son returning with his pregnant wife on the death of his grandfather. A slow build and study of small village relationships and atmosphere.

After reading Andrew Michael Hurley’s excellent The Loney, I jumped at the chance to read Devil’s Day. This take place in the small community of The Endlands following the death of the Gaffer who is the grandfather of the central character John. Along with his pregnant wife Kat, he returns to his father’s farm to prepare for the funeral and to celebrate Devil’s Day with their few close friends and neighbours.
As the story unfolds we begin to learn more about the small group of people as well as the history of the surrounding community, with suspicions, secrets and long held grievances playing a large part in how they have all developed. With this there is the history of The Endlands which appears to continue circling and ever repeating itself up to the present day with no character seemingly able to escape or willing to endanger what they have with the release of their own secrets.
Due to the multiple threads of each characters story, the book makes for slow reading at times and does not really pick up pace until the final quarter of the book as Devil’s Day celebration takes place. A Wicker Man or Rosemary’s Baby twist is not to be expected and the supernatural element is only hinted at with certain threads building towards a subtle and very real conclusion.
Do not let this put the reader off as it is an enjoyable book which definitely takes place in the same world as The Loney however there were times when I felt a need for a little more urgency in the plot to drive the reader along.
For those who have read the Loney, this is a good companion piece to see where Andrew Michael Hurley is heading and will definitely look forward to his next book.

I have to say I could not get into this book. It just didn't work for me I'm afraid

A wonderful blend of folklore and history, with a rich seam of weird folk horror – putting me strongly in mind of Phil Rickman’s earlier offering though delivered with more literary prose. Ultimately this is a subtle horror story with a very strong sense of place – something I adore in a novel. At its heart it’s a story about humankind’s relationship with nature, about both finding god in the wild and discovering that no god exists except in living the life you have been given. There are no answers and even moments of hope can contain their own quiet horror. I am going to find The Lonely and read that now!

This is a very atmospheric novel - the isolation of the Endlands, the sense of menace, and the ever-threatening presence of the devil. It’s full of creeping dread and superstition and builds slowly as the fears of previous generations become more real. This makes for an unsettling read one that would be enjoyable if you like a chilling read.

This book is beautifully written and tells a story about the devil and the beliefs of the people in the Endlands. This book has a really slow pace that is not liked by everyone. I read the Loney and enjoyed it. This book has the same feel. Andrew Michael Hurley is really good at creating an atmosphere. You can feel the fear in this book and that adds to the story. I would definitely read another book by this author.