Starve Acre was another book that went on my Christmas list this year. Much like The Girl Who Reads on the Métro, the cover caught my eye and from there I was hooked. I wanted some broad reading material and you couldn’t get much more different from these two books!

I would categorise Starve Acre as a brilliant blend of gothic, supernatural and folklore fiction. It has so much to keep you gripped as it darts between the logical, rational known world, and the sinister legendary powers at play.

There is much to unsettle the reader here. A child has died, and we learn prior to his death, he had begun to commit acts of violence and harm to others. The grand, dark house faces a barren field, once home to an enormous oak tree where now nothing will grow in the slick, black mud. The neighbours are hostile. There is a secret cult called The Beacons. Previous inhabitants of the house have gone mad, and time and again the name, Jack Grey, surfaces.

As story threads both unravel and intertwine, the atmosphere is inextricably tense. Who is mad? What is real and what is myth?

I found this a superb piece of writing and am keen to read more by Andrew Michael Hurley.