The Vanishing by Wendy Webb

  

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Ghosts, Gothic
Content: Off page sex

 

Recently widowed and rendered penniless by her Ponzi-scheming husband, Julia Bishop is eager to start anew. So when a stranger appears on her doorstep with a job offer, she finds herself accepting the mysterious yet unique position: caretaker to his mother, Amaris Sinclair, the famous and rather eccentric horror novelist whom Julia has always admired…and who the world believes is dead.

When she arrives at the Sinclairs' enormous estate on Lake Superior, Julia begins to suspect that there may be sinister undercurrents to her "too-good-to-be-true" position. As Julia delves into the reasons of why Amaris chose to abandon her successful writing career and withdraw from the public eye, her search leads to unsettling connections to her own family tree, making her wonder why she really was invited to Havenwood in the first place, and what monstrous secrets are still held prisoner within its walls.

 

Typically this time of year I'm looking for creepy ghost stories to read, but I've read a book by this author before, so I knew going in that this one probably wasn't going to be a very creepy read. Though a part of me did hope I would be wrong about it. Well, I wasn't wrong. This is a ghost story that could have been creepy, all the elements are there, but it isn't written in a creepy way. It was a decent ghost story without the creepiness though. 

I thought there were some highly implausible things in this book concerning the main character's behavior, but with a book like this, I was able to suspend my disbelief and just go with it. There were a couple of twists that were easy to see coming, but overall I still liked this book. The end left me wondering a little, which I kind of liked. If you like ghost stories that aren't scary, if you like gothic stories set in big old houses, and if you like stories that incorporate some romance, then you might like this one.