Solace House by Will Maclean
Wow! If you’re looking for a totally different kind of thriller to blow your mind, Solace House by Will Maclean is the book to read.
It’s already being compared to such legendary paranormal classics as The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and The Shining from Stephen King as a mind-boggling story of strange, scary, surreal events that suddenly begin happening at a mysterious and foreboding place.
Well, Solace House sure is all of that — and even more.
Not In the Job Description
The premise is simple at first, but ultimately compelling and addictive: a group of university students hired over their summer break to clean out an abandoned old mansion discover unbelievable, other-worldly secrets that have been hidden inside the house for years and years.
Maclean sets the ominous tone of this book from the first sighting of the place known as Solace House when the narrator, a 19–year college student named Alex Lane, first hears of the abandoned old house that they’re all going to for this group cleanup effort and has this exchange about it with the leader of the project.
“You all know Solace House?”
I put a finger up. “I don’t. What is it?”
“You know it. The big Victorian house in the woods.”
“Oh,” I said. “The haunted house.”
Shortly afterward, Alex has a similar response when he actually gets to see the disturbing place known as Solace House.
“Up close, the house was even more troubling. Too large and too grand in almost every proportion, too massive and ornate … it felt at once both intimidating and ridiculous. Something about the upper floor seemed top heavy, projecting too far into the air, so that standing in front of the house was to be filled with a tangible sense of threat, as it glowered above, over-stacked, looming like a storm cloud. The various Gothic trimmings and fussiness, which at a distance seemed ecclesiastical, here seemed something else entirely, apparently honoring a scheme or philosophy that was unfamiliar, unsettling, disturbed.
“’’Haunted house,’ I whispered again, apparently involuntarily.”
We soon learn that the house had been built over a century ago by a man and his wife who were now long dead, and their son — who recently died at the age of 101 — had spent his entire life living a bizarre, solitary existence in the mansion where every room was filled with claustrophobic debris, strange things like mirrors so you can’t be sure where you are, spooky sayings written everywhere and even mannequins of human forms seated at a table in one spot.
As mind-boggling as this all is, it gets even more surreal for Alex and the others when they realize that the house might also be a secret door to another world of existence beyond even their wildest imaginations.
Shady Characters and Dark Secrets
One of the fascinating things about this book is the way Maclean slowly unveils the sinister secrets of Solace House — first with an air of foreboding and a series of ominous, creepy clues and events before many of the otherworldly events actually even begin to actually occur there.
There’s also a wonderfully interesting cast of characters among the students who are faced with dealing with everything going on in this strange house, many of whom seem to have their own secrets.
Starting with Alex himself, who is an orphan but keeps telling different stories to different people through the book about what really happened to his parents. Then there’s Adam, a strange, intense, angry man who eventually seems to know more about the house and its history than anyone else; and Ella, a young woman with the same name as the woman who had originally lived in Solace House with her husband a century ago before she mysteriously disappeared and was presumed dead.
As the dark secrets of Solace House begin to emerge — including the door to a whole new world which may be imaginary or may be real, no one is sure at first – there are disputes among the group about how far they should go in finding out whatever unworldly answers the house might have been hiding all these years.
But their curiosity pushes them further and further into exploring the unknown, even after it becomes clear how dangerous and even deadly this quest may turn out to be.
“A Wildly Memorable Psychedelic Trip”
Nothing is what it seems to be through in this amazing tale, and soon all the students there begin to wonder — just like the reader will — if these mind-bending events, this madness and this evil that they have uncovered in Solace House are truly happening or if it simply all some form of mass insanity.
And then, just when you think this story can’t get any more mind blowing, there is a shocking ending that changes everything — and will have you turning the pages frantically until the last one to savor every moment of the final reveal.
Filled with unique mystery, intrigue, fantasy and horror, Solace House takes the reader on a wildly memorable psychedelic trip that won’t soon be forgotten.
