I came across Rainforest by Michelle Paver by chance in Padstow’s bookshop. I had no idea she had a new book out, and so this was a little holiday treat to myself!

I’m a fan of Michelle Paver. I LOVED her ghost story Dark Matter. (When I say love, it also really unsettled me and I could only read it in daylight. Yes, I am a fraidy cat!) It led to me reading her next supernatural ghost story, Thin Air, which served as a very good follow up to Dark Matter, but couldn’t quite equal it because it follows a pretty similar formula. Whichever book I had read first I suspect would have been my favourite, and it just happened to be Dark Matter.

Coming across Rainforest, it was actually the familiarity that tempted me. Dark Matter is set in the Arctic. In Thin Air we find ourselves in the Himalayas. They are both such effective settings because of their inhospitable, harsh conditions. Rainforest, as the name suggests, offered a new equally inhospitable and dangerous location. Set in the Mexican jungle, there is no shortage of creatures that could kill someone unprepared for the terrain. Add a spooky, supernatural and malevolent spirit into the mix and it held a lot of promise for me.

Ultimately, it didn’t quite land for me. Simon Corbett is a difficult character to feel sorry for. He has come to the jungle under a cloud due to his obsessive stalking of a significantly younger woman. I just couldn’t empathise or care about him because his obsession with Penny was so problematic. That said, the conclusion does bring some satisfaction for me.

The jungle was a great setting for all kinds of creepiness, but it didn’t seem to build as much as her previous novels. I think for me, it’s possibly because there are a lot of other cast members in this storyline. In Dark Matter they are much more isolated. It felt safer, and it felt like there were fewer haunting moments, so I just didn’t reach the same levels of fear. There was absolutely one or two instances when the dark spirit’s appearance did make me shudder, but the tension didn’t ratchet up as I expected it to.

There are lots of familiar characteristics and storytelling techniques that I enjoy about Michelle Paver’s ghost novels. The old fashioned English vocab that we see in the 1930s stores is still present in this 1970s tale, with lots of ‘old fellow’ and ‘steady on’ and so on.

I also like the use of the journal, similar to an epistolary novel. It’s such a useful way of telling the story, and for the main character to introduce self-doubt. Very handy when you’re trying to convince yourself you may or may not be seeing things!

Ultimately, I am always going to recommend Dark Matter above and beyond all others. It just held such a grip on me and was so unsettling. I’d not read anything like it before, and so it will always be her best for me. That said, I still need to tick Wakenhyrst off the list. Set between the 1900s and 1960s, it’s a chilling, gothic horror involving murder and a mental asylum. It could well be that the best is still to come, which is always an exciting thought!