This literary ghost story grabs you by the hand and doesn't let go even after you've finished reading it. Will Maclean's debut novel shows that this is an author who knows what he's doing (he is an experienced scriptwriter and it shows). He captures the 1970's so well, he took me back to my childhood with references to popular culture and drew a perfect picture of what it was like growing up in the 70's. We know immediately with the opening line to expect the unexpected...."And so the first thing my twin sister and I did, when we finally got access to a camera of our own, was fake a ghost photograph”. We meet twins Tim and Abi who are fascinated with all things paranormal/supernatural, they are incredibly bright and spend their time together in the attic of their house discussing the occult and hauntings and from this the idea of faking a ghost photograph forms, however this will lead to tragedy.

The narrative is told through Tim, the novel moves through the 70's leading us ever deeper into the world of the paranormal. This is a literary ghost story at its best, it unnerves and unsettles the reader whilst bringing to life the characters and the world they live in. I absolutley loved this and can't recommend it enough.

This book almost feels like multiple books in one.

At the start, it’s the story of twins Tim and Abi, who are obsessed with ghosts. They become so obsessed with ghostly images in photographs they decide to fake their own, scaring a classmate who goes on to make a terrifying prediction.

The first half of this book was my favourite. I don’t want to give too much away but I love the mystery, almost thriller element of the start and the initial twist and the family drama around it.

I don’t think the synopsis I read have much away about where the middle section of the book would go, but it was a surprise to me and it wasn’t what I expected. I found it interesting but not as spooky as I had hoped.

I did however, really enjoy the twists and turns in this book, and the epilogue in particular.

4 stars

„And so the first thing my twin sister and I did, when we finally got access to a camera of our own, was fake a ghost photograph”.

The book starts with one of the best first sentences I’ve ever came across in a book. I just love it. Tim and Abby are fourteen and have always been a bit different. They feel superior not only to their fellow pupils but to everyone else, too. Including their parents. They live in world of their own. They know everything about ghosts and occult things. They have read every book that is out there about that stuff. So it is quite natural for them to come up with the idea of faking a picture of a ghost. Then they decide to show it to someone and they choose a girl from their school. But this turns out not like they thought. The girl tells them that they have no idea what they did with creating this ghost.

The first third of the book is gripping. The second part drags a bit when we follow Tim coming to terms with was has happened to his family. When he finds his way into a group of young people who are investigating a haunting in a mansion in Essex the story speeds up again. The story itself develops into something different than I expected. But it was all the way entertaining and interesting. For the first half I would have thought this is a solid 5 star book. But because of the lengths in the middle I make it 4 stars. It is an unusual book with an unusual story and the writing is superb. I especially liked that it finds to a satisfying ending. Ending such kind of stories is often a problem but here the author brings it all together with a nice bow. I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

I can’t quite believe that what I have just read, is a debut novel. Although Will Maclean is an experienced television scriptwriter, his first published fiction novel “The Apparition Phase”, is a stunning literary debut with excellent narrative, an engrossing, unsettling storyline and diverse characters that are instantly endearing.
Teenage twins Abi and Tim, spend their evenings in their parents attic, discussing the macabre and unexplained, researching folklore and the supernatural. When they come up with a plan to fake a photo of a ghost, to frighten an unpopular girl at school, they set in motion a series of events they couldn’t possibly have foreseen. Is the insensitive and cruel prank about to take on a life of its own and how will the girl react when she becomes further entangled in their lives?
What I particularly liked was how the author included real life suspected ghost photos and published references to hauntings, some which intrigued me enough to research whilst reading. This ensured the story stayed in the realms of reality instead on the totally impossible. There’s a fine line between what you want to believe and what is actual when suffering from grief. Attending seances etc in the hope you’ll receive messages from lost loved ones or visiting haunted buildings that you know the history of, can blur your interpretations of what you believe you see. The moral of “The Apparition Phase” asks the reader to question what is real or what is invented when the mind is tricked and is there even a difference between them?
I loved Tim and I felt I was personally with him every step of his tortuous journey. Set in the early 1970’s, the decade I grew up in, I enjoyed the atmosphere of the era and the way the story was told from Tim’s recollection. It positively held my attention from the first chapter to the final jaw dropping page! A fascinating and spooky denouement, kept me on the edge of my seat and I can’t think of a better read for this Halloween than Will Maclean’s suspenseful and entertaining “The Apparition Phase”.

5 stars

Very much written in the vein of Shirley Jackson, this is an atmospheric, ambiguous and often powerfully evocative literary tale. Maclean excelled in his portrayal of the twins in the first of the book’s four parts, and this was by far my favourite segment. At times, I wished this relationship had remained the focus of the story, because it was so vividly written, and I loved the interplay of the Addams Family-esque siblings. But I enjoyed the ensuing mystery/character study, and in particular the nods to Harry Price and Borley Rectory. Looking forward to seeing what Maclean rustles up next.

Tim and Abi are twins, fascinated in ghosts and everything paranormal. Different than others, they stick to themselves. They photograph a home-made ghost as a joke, but after that their lives escalate into something sinister.

Well written and developed story mostly about growing up, sadness, grief and friendship.

The Apparition Phase follows precocious twins Abi and Tim as they attempt to scare a girl at their school by recreating a photograph of a ghost. Unfortunately, this works out to be more effective than they planned and over time, leads to Tim becoming embroiled in a seance at a manor house that is rumoured to be haunted by its previous owner - Tobias Salt.

Although well-written, well paced and filled with moments of tension, I found this novel to be fairly lacklustre. Whilst categorised as an adult novel, I felt it would be better listed as a young adult novel.

Despite adequately exploring Tim's trauma, focusing solely on his character lets the book down somewhat as I felt the other characters he meets during the seances had plenty of room for character development, yet this was sadly unexplored. I also felt the ending to be completely disconnected from the rest of the book and lazily written as if the author had run out of ideas.

Thanks to Random House UK, Cornerstone and NetGalley for the ARC.

The Story

The story begins with the twins Tim and Abi, who are unlike other teenagers of their age. They are voracious readers and have a keen interest in the occult.
Living in a London suburb in the 70s with wit as good as their's, Tim and Abi are usually bored. So they decide to fake a ghost photograph in their favorite place, their home attic.
Not content with just that, they decide to prank a friend at school, and that's the tipping point of our story. Janice Tupp, the girl who they showed the image and told a made-up backstory, has a fit during a class, leading the twins to reveal her the truth.
The story is sad after that for the first part, and it somehow transitions into a Shirley Jackson styled ghost hunt in Yarling, a victorian era manor in the countryside of Suffolk.

My Review

Simply put, I loved this book. And given the fact that this is a debut novel, I'd say the author has done an exemplary job in creating tension and a sense of foreboding.
I loved how the scenes ended without becoming tedious. The entire story was very well-paced.
But I couldn't help but notice that the story looks more like two different ones rather than just the one. The first part of it deals more with the general teenage horrors of the 70's suburbia like bullying, drugs, etc. However, suddenly after tragedy strikes the Smiths, Tim, unable to cope with the events, becomes a shadow of his past self.
After his therapist decides to prove him wrong about the supernatural that seems to be haunting Tim, the story moves to its second half that is a complete contrast to the first part.
The second half of it mostly feels like a coming of age novel dealing with teenage emotions, and of course, a spooky ghost haunting the manor they are staying.
I would have loved to read a little bit more about the characters involved in the second part of the novel. The ending was the best part of the story, which will leave you both spooked and also a bit thoughtful about how reliable the entire narration was from Tim's perspective.
As final thoughts, I will keep an eye out for future endeavors from Will Maclean.
Thanks to NetGalley, Random House UK, Cornerstone for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A brilliantly written, haunting debut novel. I was surprised at how quickly I read this. The story is so well paced that I just had to keep reading to find out what would happen next.

This is another author who has just shot to the top of my must reads list. Can’t wait to see where we are taken next.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the early copy.

This was a mystery with a ghost story, and I really enjoyed it. It has hints of horror too. It's very well written and gripping.
Thanks a lot to NG and the publisher for this copy.

EXCERPT: I looked about me at our attic - the library, the horrible bits of Victorian taxidermy we'd picked up from junk shops, the dust-furred oil paintings of bleak landscapes, the interesting and peculiar objects that inevitably gathered on any horizontal surface in the vicinity of either of us. The only significant thing we hadn't added to the place was a large home-made dolls house, which we had discovered in the attic the first time we ever went up there, and had deemed both creepy enough to keep, and too heavy to move.

'We'll have to tidy up a bit.'

'Yes. Get some extra lights, hide the books, that sort of thing. Make it look respectable.'

Abigail must have read some element of doubt in my face. She leaned forward in her armchair and fixed me with her dark eyes.

'All we have to do is make out that it's all fine. We take her up here, she sees how absolutely unhaunted our attic and indeed our entire house is, and that's that.' Abi touched her fingertips to her lips. 'All we have to do is be normal for a while.'

And so it was agreed between us that Janice Tupp would come over to our house after school next Thursday, in order not to see a ghost.

ABOUT 'THE APPARITION PHASE': Tim and Abi have always been different from their peers. Precociously bright, they spend their evenings in their parents’ attic discussing the macabre and unexplained, zealously rereading books on folklore, hauntings and the supernatural. In particular, they are obsessed with photographs of ghostly apparitions and the mix of terror and delight they provoke in their otherwise boring and safe childhoods.

But when Tim and Abi decide to fake a photo of a ghost to frighten an unpopular school friend, they set in motion a deadly and terrifying chain of events that neither of them could have predicted, and are forced to confront the possibility that what began as a callous prank might well have taken on a malevolent life of its own.

MY THOUGHTS: 'My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose' - Haldane

I couldn't help but thinking of the Adams family children when I read the physical descriptions of Abi and Tim, intelligent twins with enquiring minds and a passion for the macabre.

Maclean has written an atmospheric and intriguing gothic thriller with all the required elements: a missing person, a select group of people confined together in a creepy old house, and unexplained phenomena. Mass hysteria? Cleverly orchestrated fraud? Or something darker and more sinister? This is what Maclean will have you wondering. His skilful machinations will have you changing your mind with every twist and turn.

Yarlings has a gruesome history and yet has never made it into the books of haunted houses, making it perfect for a scientific experiment to once and for all prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. 'It seemed that, no matter how bright the day outside, the interior of Yarlings was always dark, always gloomy, always permeated with a troubled air, as if overthinking its presence.' Ancient timbers crack like knuckles, the rooms are filled with an oppressing and brooding silence, almost an air of expectation, like it is waiting to be brought back to life, a place of 'weird emotional textures.' The ideal place in which to conduct a seance, or several.

The people who have been carefully selected for the experiment by Graham and Sally, are college students, all known to one another, and who seem to be a fairly ordinary lot. Tim enters the mix quite by accident, the seventh person, and catalyst for all that follows.

The Apparition Phase is unsettling rather than terrifying; unsettling, unnerving and deliciously creepy.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.4

#TheApparitionPhase #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Originally from the Wirral, Will Maclean has been fascinated by ghost stories since he was a child, and has been writing them almost as long as he can remember.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Random House UK, Cornerstone via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of The Apparition Phase by Will Maclean for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review is also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

When there’s a new literary ghost story coming out from a respected publisher, especially if it’s by a debut author, I usually add it to my wishlist. It doesn’t have to sound like it’s going to break new ground: I like ghost stories in general so much that I’m more forgiving of their flaws, more willing to accept cliches. Which is to say that I went into The Apparition Phase with totally average expectations, thinking I’d enjoy it, but not anticipating anything spectacular. And I was blown away.

Part I of the novel introduces twins Tim and Abigail Smith. We first encounter them attempting to fake a ghost photograph with which to frighten their friends, and we learn that they are fascinated by all things supernatural. Their plan works rather too well: their classmate Janice is so terrified of the picture that she faints. The ramifications of this incident take over Tim and Abi’s lives; eventually they’re separated and sent to different schools. But their ghost fixation persists. In the early 1970s, it seems the world shares not only their obsession, but also their conviction that ‘an answer was just around the corner’.

'Our thinking on the subject of ghosts [was] that science might, one day very soon, explain them, understand them, and in doing so open up a whole new way of thinking about the world. This was a perfectly reasonable expectation, back then. We were not alone in believing it.'

And then an earth-shattering event changes everything: Abi disappears.

This first section of the book is spellbinding. In parts, it reminded me of Nina Allan’s The Rift, my personal ne plus ultra of ‘missing person’ novels. (There is also one scene – in which Janice lashes out at the twins with what seems to be a prophecy or possession – which is truly chilling, almost cinematic in its intensity, and sure to remain lodged in the reader’s mind.) The blurb gives the impression that Part I is the backbone of the entire story. So it was a bit disorientating to be yanked from all that sublime scene-setting into Part II, which, it turns out, sets the tone for everything else. Set a few years later, it involves Tim joining a group of ghost hunters at a country house called Yarlings.

A number of new characters are introduced, one of whom is intolerable, and there’s – horror of horrors – a romantic subplot. I floundered for a while, wondering if the first hundred pages had been as good as it would get. But The Apparition Phase finds its groove again, and when it does, it’s thrilling and intriguing in an entirely different way. Tim’s world opens up, but we never lose sight of his grief, and alongside him we are caught up in the romance, hope and terror of the ghost hunt, the ever-shifting dynamics of the quickly intimate group, and the question of what might really be going on behind the scenes. It all culminates in an indelible sequence with Tim traversing the Suffolk countryside by night, a journey as metaphorical and (yes) haunted as it is physical.

There are traces here of Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger; the way in which Tim falls in love with Yarlings, and everything it represents for him, is very reminiscent of Waters’ Faraday. It also reminded me a lot of Gary Gibson’s novella Ghost Frequencies, itself inspired by The Stone Tape, which is mentioned here as a favourite of Tim and Abi. As for that hallucinatory trip through the darkness, the triumphant final sequence of Catriona Ward’s Rawblood comes to mind.

I loved both the broad details and the specifics of The Apparition Phase: its scope and themes in general, but also the level of detail we’re given about settings, characters and relationships. A great ghost story can’t always also be a satisfying novel, but this is definitely both. A brilliant surprise.

This book was in-between the genre. A part mystery, good part drama and some sort of horror element as well. I love when authors do that, go beyond, not limit themselves or felt restricted by classification. This was a very interesting book that I would recommend for those who want something different!

The premise of this story was great and it started out really well. I liked that it mentioned lots of texts and hauntings that do exist in reality outside of the novel.

However, I found the novel to be a bit of a drag after the first quarter. The precise voice that captured the young twins so well became a bit stuffy and overly verbose and to be honest it wasn't really creepy at all for the rest of the story. I kept waiting to be scared and things happened to scare the characters but they didn't jump off the page at all.

I think I just thought it was, and wanted it to be a different book.

My thanks to the publisher and netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a clever ghost story which will give any reader the willies. Apart from the fundamental ghost story, the characters were also very interesting. The ominous declaration of having awoken “something” by the carefully drawn “outsider” and the impact of her words on the twins was chilling. Great settings, great characters.

"And so the first thing my twin sister and I did, when we finally got access to a camera of our own, was fake a ghost photograph."

That sentence alone is the reason I wanted to read this book. Unfortunately, it was not what the book was about. The beginning was great, opening with thirteen year old twins Tim and Abi concocting a photo of a ghost in their attic. The picture triggers a series of unfortunate events for about a quarter of the book in which I was hooked. However, the story took a detour early on onto a completely unrelated path. What followed was basically a coming of age story, with a hint of the supernatural, told by a now adult Tim. I felt completely misled by the blurb, which is only a very small part of the story. If your a fan of The Secret History you might like this, as it follows a similar vein of adolescent camaraderie with seances instead of murder. There was also a romantic element with the naive Tim.
This was most definitely a young adult novel, despite the narrators adult prose. Tim sounded like an adult but repeatedly acted like a child throughout his life. I don't even know what to say about the ending. It barely made sense and felt unrelated to the rest of the story, which was, at times, a mess. A coming of age story with a (dim) supernatural twist.

**Thanks to Random House UK, Cornerstone and Netgalley for my early review copy.

A wonderfully creepy tale full of interesting characters. At times I wasn’t sure if this was more of a horror novel or a story about loss and grief. In fact, both here go hand in hand as Tim, who is fond of ghostly tales to begin with, tries to make sense of a family tragedy and thereby gets drawn into a paranormal experiment.
There was one passage in the book where the story dragged a little (hence only four stars) but all in all this was a wonderful book full of a delicious eeriness. Perfect for a cold autumn night.

Growing up in a London suburb in the early 1970s, teenage twins Tim and Abi Smith are obsessed with the uncanny – not just ghosts but also “standing stones, witches, curses, the British countryside, the ancient Egyptians (with particular emphasis on their burial rites), the Vikings, voodoo, vampires, the mythical giant squid, real-life accounts of people being attacked (and, even better, devoured) by large wild animals, Dracula, Doctor Who, space exploration, the futuristic domed cities that people would one day live in on the ocean floor, pond life, medieval history, medieval weaponry, medieval siege warfare, eclipses, coral reefs, escapology, how to start fires, UFOs, card tricks…” They spend hours together in the attic, discussing the frightening and the macabre. Accordingly, when they decide to play a practical joke at school, their idea involves faking a ghost photograph, portraying “a creature of smoke, of cobwebs, of moonlight, made of insubstantial mist that faded as soon as it was perceived”. They show the resulting image to Janice Tupp, an unpopular student in their class and her reaction exceeds their wildest expectations. Visibly rattled, she faints. Then, on a visit to the attic where the photograph was created, not only does Janice not accept that she was taken in by a forgery, but in a frightening trance-like state, she ominously declares that the twins have “woken something up… ” And it certainly seems that the prank has triggered bad karma, because tragedy soon hits the Smith family.

Years later, still trying to come to terms with these traumatic events, Tim gets involved with a group of paranormal researchers who are investigating the purported haunting of a sprawling manor in the Suffolk countryside. You would have thought that Tim would have learnt from his earlier brush with the supernatural to give this sort of stuff a wide berth. Yet, he enthusiastically joins the experiment, partly, one suspects, because he is seduced by the glamour of the upper-class set to which his new friends belong. As séance follows séance, it soon becomes apparent that, once again, “something is woken up…”

Will Maclean is an established screenwriter and, whilst this is his debut novel, it is clearly the work of an assured and experienced author. The Apparition Phase grips you from the very first pages and never lets you go. The plot twists and turns, and the scarier passages are scary indeed. The work taps into what I feel is a current fad for 1970’s nostalgia, especially amongst the horror-loving community. (I’m thinking, for instance, of Dead Ink’s Eden Book Society project, whose books I have reviewed elsewhere on this blog). Much of the atmosphere of the novel is, in fact, provided by the historical cultural references to that decade, including the famed BBC TV productions which brought the uncanny to the mainstream.

The Apparition Phase sometimes feels like two books rolled into one. On the one hand it is a work of suburban horror, where the supernatural events almost pale in relation to the more mundane terrors of drug and alcohol addiction, derelict housing, bullying, vandalism and random violence. On the other hand, it also provides the familiar chills of traditional supernatural fiction, with more than a nod to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Tim provides the link between these two worlds, even though, admittedly, they sometimes sit uncomfortably together.

For me, The Apparition Phase is a resounding 5-star read. It might not be perfect: I feel that sometimes the plot is a tad too tidy, too revealing of its machinery. For instance, interesting and promising characters are unhesitatingly disposed of when they are no longer needed to further the story. And the ending, whilst certainly brilliantly addressing some open questions (and tantalisingly raising new ones), also comes across as rather “convenient”. Yet, despite these reservations, I found it a gut-wrenching, spinetingling roller coaster of a ghost novel. I’m no Janice Tupp and do not have any knack for prophecy. However, I will take the plunge and predict that The Apparition Phase will be nothing short of a horror sensation.

It’s the 1970’s when we meet 13 year old twins, Tim and Abigail (Abi), who from a very young age have had a fascination with the paranormal, though it could be argued that it’s become more of an unhealthy obsession. Their knowledge of ghostly apparitions caught on camera, inspires them to create a ghostly photo of their own - a fake one of course, echoing the girls who said they’d taken photos of The Cottingley Fairies in 1917. But have they unwittingly attracted a malevolent entity or is it all in their imagination?

My thoughts on reading ‘The Apparition Phase’? - well, the psychological effects alone would make me unwilling to mess with the unknown!

There were some really strange and spooky events during the seances, (held of course in an old, dark, and creepy country house), and a heart pounding scene towards the end that left me breathless, not to mention terrified! A well written debut novel that is simply perfect for Halloween, or any other time of the year for that matter - as long you’re up for a spooky read?

This is a fantastically gripping page turner, I couldn’t put it down. It is so artfully written, it steers you through twisting plot turns to unthinkable conclusions, which you then have to revisit as the narrative further unfolds. Maclean pays homage to gothic tropes and unreliable narrators in the intertextual nods to Fowles’ ‘The Magus’ and Jackson’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House’, yet strikes fresh and unexpected notes. This will be utterly irresistible to fans of the genre and any reader seeking to lose themselves in an enthralling read. I can’t wait to read more from Maclean!