Intrigue, murder, and family secrets: The Restoration by JH Moncrieff #TheRestoration #RandomThingsTours #spooktober

Inspired by the author’s overnight stay in a historical haunted house, The Restoration is a thrilling tale of intrigue, murder, and family secrets that refuse to stay buried.
It was the perfect opportunity…or so she thought. When Terri Foxworth is hired to spend a year restoring a crumbling manor house, she believes she’s hit the jackpot. She moves in with her young daughter and high hopes for the project’s success. As the restoration begins to go terribly wrong, she realizes dark forces won’t let her leave the house until its horrible secrets are revealed.
This job could very well be the death of her.

👻👻👻👻.5

Hi and welcome to my review of The Restoration!

Massive thanks to Anne Cater for the tour invite and to Flame Tree Press for the gorgeous review copy!

Welcome to Glenvale, a red-brick, three-storey mansion in dire need of restoration. Enter Terri. With her love and respect for history and old buildings, she’ll be able to restore Glenvale to its former grandeur in no time. Only, Terri isn’t the first contractor Glenvale has seen. Her predecessors apparently all suffered from an “overactive imagination” and left shortly after arriving. As a divorced mum of one, Terri doesn’t feel she has the luxury to let rumours of hauntings get under her skin, she is determined to make things work. Before long, however, Terri’s ten-year-old daughter who will be staying with her at Glenvale for the summer, is talking about the boy who once lived in her room…

I fell for The Restoration hook, line and sinker. The cover intrigued me, the blurb drew in further (I can never resist the pull of murder and buried family secrets) and honestly, I just can’t walk away from a haunted house story, especially this time of year.

The Restoration was my first Moncrieff novel, so I wouldn’t say I went in with many expectations, but I sure as hell went in with high hopes and boy, did she deliver! I had such a great time with The Restoration! There were the creepy moments that are a given in any proper haunted house tale but there was also a more vivid and elaborate characterisation than you would normally expect from this kind of read. Did I always think Terri acted like the responsible adult she was supposed to be? No, not quite, but I understood where she was coming from, so her less than perfect behaviour didn’t bother me.

At only a little over 200 pages, The Restoration does not beat about the bush. Taut and not pulling any punches, it draws its reader in from the first pages. This was such an addictive read too, I flew through it! Part ghost story, part murder mystery, I just needed to find out what would happen to Terri and her daughter but I was also desperate to know what had happened to the resident ghost, whom the former housekeeper is adamant was murdered.

The Restoration is a twisty and twisted haunted house tale that was a pleasure to be immersed in. If you want to get your Halloween on, do pick up The Restoration!