Genre: Gothic Horror Romance

Pairing: M/F

The Haunting of Beatrix Green Episode 1 by Rachel Hawkings, Ash Parsons, and Vicky Alvear Schecter is a cooperative novel that is currently available through Serial Box where it is released in weekly installments.  I received the full novel version from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  The story revolves around Beatrix Green, a fake spiritualist, who makes her living providing closure to people who have lost loved ones.  As per the book’s description: “In Victorian England a savvy spiritual medium must outsmart the most important client of her career: a scientist determined to expose frauds like her,” and then something about wits and fatal consequences blah blah blah.   That just covers the first 10% of the book, we learn pretty early on that the scientist, James Walker, is only exposing frauds because he is in need of a real spiritualist and is under the belief that Beatrix is it.

James Walker needs someone to help exorcise spirits from his family home so he can let go of the past before he makes a new future for himself in America.   And this is where the bulk of the story takes place, Ashbury Manor. An ancient residence with a tragic past and evil within.  James, Beatrix, Harry, Beatrix’s friend and sidekick, Amanda Reynolds, an American photographer, and Stanhope all gather in the manor to try and communicate with the dead in order to rid the house of what haunts it.

It is during the first night in the house and the seance that is performed we learn, and Beatrix too apparently, that Ms. Green is not actually a fraud. She seems to have a connection to the otherworld that made it possible for spirits to communicate through her.   It is at this point that the book becomes more of a haunted house story with a smattering of romance thrown in, for no real good reason, than anything else.  It was also at this point and later toward the climax of the story that all I could think about was the movie “Monster House.”  Although I love the movie, I’m not saying that as a compliment.  Some descriptions of the going ons in the house were laughable at best.

It might just be my imagination but the slight shifts in tone between one chapter to the next when there was a switch in writers was kinda obvious.  This probably works really well as a serial when you have a week between episodes and don’t have two competing voices in your head.  It was an enjoyable read, but not one I felt the need to finish, I started this back before Halloween, so yeah, or to see what was going to happen.  It was predictable and at the end of the day couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a horror or romance, so it ended not being either.