the only thing to fear . . .

Alex Ives is starting over. Again. After getting herself and her son into a bad situation in Sydney, she’s taking him and her infant daughter and moving away. She found a new opportunity, and she needs this fresh start, somewhere safe. Because she wasn’t safe in Sydney.

This new place is Pine Ridge, an ecovillage being built just a couple of hours away from the city. Set in a valley, picturesque like a European town built into a seaside, and filled with the calming presence of trees, Pine Ridge will be a place where she and her son Ollie and her daughter Kara can plant some roots.

But their first day there, before they’ve even gotten to the key, Alex finds a dead bird in a box left right outside their front door. Alex thought it creepy, but she threw it away before her kids saw it, so she’s willing to shrug it off as some sort of strange mistake. I mean, it wasn’t left there for them. No one knew they would be there. She was very careful about that.

And then her upstairs neighbor appears and welcomes them, and then the man who runs Pine Ridge shows up with her keys and a bottle of wine to welcome her, and Alex starts to relax a little. She gets her kids moved in, she and Ollie moving their things in from the car, and she tries to get settled in. But having a 14-year-old and an 8-month-old at the same time is a constant juggling act. She and Ollie used to be two peas in a pod, but now they just fight all the time. And with Kara’s feedings, Alex hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in ages. She’s trying to do what’s best for her family, but some days it’s so hard to know what that is.

Alex wants to like it there at Pine Ridge, and she usually does. But sometimes she gets that feeling that someone is watching her. She can hear voices in the trees. She sees a woman standing around sometimes, an older woman in a green raincoat, who stares back. Alex will look away for a second, and the woman will be gone. Or was she ever really there? Is it her exhausted brain playing tricks on her? And then there are the markings on the trees. It looks like a house with three figures inside it. But she can’t figure out what it is or what it’s supposed to mean.

But when she finds that same symbol on a piece of paper and left in her mailbox, she’s determined to find out. Alex stops a kid who is riding past on his bike and asks what it means. He says that the the first figure is bones. The second is a doll. And the third is blood. That’s the order they go in. They give you gifts, he explains. First, they bring you bones, like a dead animal or something. Then they bring you a doll that kind of looks like you. Then they cover a photo in blood, a photo of the person they’re coming for. And then they take that person. It’s like what happened to the boy who went missing from there.

And he points to the big farmhouse at the top of the ridge.

Alex had been told that that house had belonged to the family who used to live there, who ran their family flower farm. But their teenaged son went missing, and they ended up selling the farm to the developers of Pine Ridge. The boy had never been found.

Alex shook off the story, thinking it just a spooky story that kids tell each other, or that parents tell kids to keep them away from dangerous places. But then another box shows up. It looks identical to the box that had the dead bird. When Alex opens it, she sees a doll. It’s crudely made, but it’s definitely a doll. And Alex doesn’t know what to believe anymore.

All she knows is that she will do whatever it takes to keep her family safe. Even if that means putting herself in danger to get to the truth.

Anna Downes is back with The Shadow House, a creepy thriller that keeps you guessing at what is real and what is imagined. With a unique setting and diverse characters, this story sets a strong pace and keeps it going until the end.

I like that The Shadow House is set in an ecovillage, offering interesting background and characters to the action, and Alex’s search for the truth takes her on a journey through rumors, gossip, and guesses until she finally uncovers the answers. But at the heart of this novel is family, the idea that you will sacrifice anything for those you love most, and how to protect your children from any evil that comes their way, and that is a noble theme done really well. Highly recommended!

Egalleys for The Shadow House were provided by Minotaur Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.