excellent story

brilliant story with a strong female character !! The narrator was very good ,able to bring the different characters alive with his changes if voice .

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A Winter Cracker

A great book and listen. I don't usually enjoy books with war as a subject matter but this was so much more and I'm glad I gave it a go. There's wonderful characters, intrigue, suspense, mystery, romance and a bit of supernatural. All this plus it takes place in a house with secret passages that's been cut off from the world by storms, what's not to love. Very atmospheric, well written and narrated. I'm hoping for a second book with Kate and Donovan but it will be tough to follow up this one.

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15 people found this helpful

Agatha Christy-esq murder mystery

Absolutely loved this story.
It’s part ghost story,part murder mystery,part World War One thriller.
The two main characters are quite endearing as are the rest of the characters, a wicked old German woman, some soldiers and some officers, some frivolity and some ptsd all in the best possible British humour and guns ho spirit. I wanted it to go on forever.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys WW1 history, spy novels, Agatha Christy fans or anyone who has never read a spy novel or a murder mystery or a good old ghost story but wants to try them out.
I really enjoyed both listening to this and reading it. I like the narrator doing all the different voices. Some of which made me giggle!

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4 people found this helpful

Good story, a little deceiving...

I listened to the audiobook edition.

Although set in a house very much full of ghosts, this is not the ghosts story I was hoping for. Set in 1917 it's more a story of spies and espionage.

But the story is a good one, and well-deserving on a 4-star rating...probably made all the better with a great narrator, adept at accents.

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The Echo Of Your Last Goodbye

Predicated on the simple but inspired idea of blending a WW1 espionage thriller with a Golden Age murder mystery and a classic English Ghost Story, W. C. Ryan's novel adds a bunch of likely characters to a suitably gothic mansion, slaps a squirming bag of motives on the table and lets it all kick off. With a blizzard howling around the walls and a seance underway, the bodies soon ... fail to start piling up.
Here the novel appears to lose confidence in itself, fudging its way through much of the remaining word-count. It seems that having readied all the pieces for play Ryan didn't really know what to do with them next; characters wander about hidden passages, back stories flash past, red herrings flop about and ghosts pop up here and there. It's a shame because the two central characters have chemistry which puts them in good stead for further adventures. Indeed, many of the individual parts are interesting but they just don't come together, the supernatural elements fail to spark against the other intrigues. Much of the problem is that the stylish premise warrants a smart structure to play with the forms of the three genres involved, and that just doesn't happen here; it's all a bit ordinary, decent enough and enjoyable in itself, but ultimately underwhelming. It's also not spooky. The phantom presences are just that; the Blackwater Abbey setting, a locus of paranormal activity, merely another detail.
Narrator Jot Davies does a fabulous job but it's to the book's detriment that he was also the narrator for 'The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle', which took a similarly clever conceit and setting but did something more ambitious with them; 'A House Of Ghosts' suffers by comparison.

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Loved this

A mystery alongside the supernatural is not my usual listen so I went into this book not really expecting to like it …how wrong I was. Set during the First World War the action takes place on an island within a haunted house. A seance is to be held and the people involved are hoping to reach their lost sons, brothers….there’s espionage, bad weather, charlatans and a wee touch of romance. Bought as a BOGOF and I’m so glad I took a chance.

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Almost a really really good book.

A country house mystery set during the Great War with both supernatural and government spooks- what’s not to like? Shades of a contemporary Dennis Wheatley.
In the first half, the sense of time and place was beautifully drawn, and the characters were distinct and intriguing.
But the second half lost momentum as the ghosts were relegated to mere onlookers in a wartime drama. Such a shame.
I love the narrator (since Evelyn Hardcastle) but Kate needed a more clipped Celia Johnson accent.

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2 people found this helpful

Entertaining tale of spooks

The reading is excellent by Jot Davies. There are many ghosts, but they are not in the least frightening. This is essentially a romance between two characters who work for the secret service during the First World War. There’s lots of potential here, and eventually a murder, but there are some cliches too. A house on an island cut off in a storm, riddled with secret passages. Some of the period atmosphere works, but this isn’t Susan Hill or ‘Turn of the Screw’. Saved by an excellent reader as an audio book .

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1 person found this helpful

Slow start but give this a chance

I enjoy period setting ghost mysteries and this ticks all the boxes. It balances cliché and new ideas well. Isolated island in a storm and cast of secretive characters but also an interesting ghost lore and unexpected interactions with them. I get pulled in everytime I listen. This is one of the stories I judge other stories of the same genre by. It is a slow start but as soon as the séances start it rolls along at a perfect pace. I hope this is the start of a series with Kate and Donovan.

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1 person found this helpful

Didn’t know what it wanted to be

The supernatural elements were totally superfluous to the story.

The book was just starting to get interesting when the author either forgot about the spirits or he accidentally mixed two draft novels together.

As a wartime “who done it” was passable, if not predictable

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