Review: The Forgotten House on the Moor

The Forgotten House on the Moor  by Jane Lovering
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Alice Donaldson had a difficult childhood, with both parents very ill she was forced to play a caretaker role at a young age, it led to her being marked as 'different' at school and combined with her size led to her being bullied and ostracised. She took the only work experience that would be flexible about her working hours to help her parents and then just fell into a full-time job with them afterwards. Now eighteen years later, with one failed marriage, Alice is content to live alone in her parents' tiny cottage and do the admin at a local double-glazing firm.

One day she is woken by the police, her ex-husband has died in an explosion at an old deserted farmhouse on the Yorkshire Moors, while hunting for ghosts of all things. Perplexed as to why the police would be contacting her when she hasn't sen Grant for six years, Alice is even more confused as to how her couch-potato husband came to be ghost-hunting in an abandoned house in the middle of the night.

While exploring the Yorkshire Moors trying to make sense of Grant's death, Alice runs into brother and sister Max and Jenna, Jenna and Grant were a couple and she is devastated by his death. Max tells Alice that Jenna suffered from an eating disorder after she lost Grant's baby a few months ago and he is worried that Grant's death will cause a regression. Max is a psychologist, and owner of the house in which Grant died, he is writing a book on the house which is allegedly haunted and collating stories from people who have seen something there.

More to humour Jenna than for any other reason, Alice agrees to help Jenna investigate why Grant went off alone in the middle of the night to a house with no electricity and what he expected to achieve, but their investigations bring her closer to the devastatingly handsome Max and Alice has to keep reminding herself that tall, dark, handsome men don't fall for size 16 plain women with dubious dress sense and mundane jobs.

I have to say I hesitated to request this book because I am not a fan of ghost stories or horror and I feared this might be some scary suspense type of novel. Fear not, nothing like that. This is very funny, Alice has a wicked sense of humour and there is a super satisfying romance. My only gripe is I would have liked the ghost explained ...

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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