Tim and Abi have always been different from their peers. Precociously bright, they spend their evenings in their parents' attic discussing the macabre and unexplained, zealously re-reading books on folklore, hauntings and the supernatural. In particular, they are obsessed with photographs of ghostly apparitions and the mix of terror and delight they provoke in their otherwise boring and safe childhoods.
But when Tim and Abi decide to fake a photo of a ghost to frighten an unpopular school friend, they set in motion a deadly and terrifying chain of events that neither of them could have predicted, and are forced to confront the possibility that what began as a callous prank might well have taken on a malevolent life of its own.
An unsettling literary ghost story set between a claustrophobic British suburban town and a menacing Suffolk manor, THE APPARITION PHASE is an unnerving novel, which, like all the best ghost stories, pushes us repeatedly over the line between rational explanation and inexplicable fear. It asks us to consider what might be lurking in the shadows, and questions what is real and what is simply a trick of the mind - and whether there's really a difference between the two.
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And so the first thing, my twin sister and I did, when we finally got access to a camera of our own, was fake a ghost photograph. 1
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(@WmHeinemann, 29 October 2020, 406 pages, ebook, copy from the publisher via # NetGalley and voluntarily reviewed)
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This is a new author for me. The Apparition Phase is a terrific read, an unsettling urban ghost story. I thought it was great and would read more from the author. I knew I was going to enjoy the book within a few pages. The book starts innocently enough with Tim and Abi deciding to fake a ghost photograph and they use it to frighten a classmate which works a bit too well when the terrified girl refuses to believe it was a fake and insists they have summoned a real ghost. This is when things get darker and darker. Abi vanishes and Tim is left bereft without his twin wondering what's happened to her and if it has anything to do with the prank. Time passes and Tim, still searching for his sister becomes embroiled with so-called ghost hunters conducting an experiment in a creepy house. Things get freaky and point to an actual haunting but is something else going on?
