Morgan always knew her father, Owen, never murdered her mother, and has spent the last six years campaigning for his release from prison. Finally he is set free, but they can no longer live in the house that was last decorated by her mother’s blood. Salvation comes in the form of a tall, dark and notorious decorative granite tower on the Cornish coastline known only as ‘The Folly’. The owner makes them an offer: take care of the Folly, and you can live there. It’s an offer too good to refuse.
At first the Folly is idyllic, but soon a stranger arrives who acts like Morgan’s mother, talks like her mother, and wears her dead mother’s clothes. Is this stranger hell-bent on vengeance, in touch with her restless mother’s spirit itself, or simply just deranged? And, most importantly, what exactly happened the night Morgan’s mother died?
An atmospheric nod to The Lighthouse, with hints of Du Maurier’s Rebecca, played out on a lonely, Cornish backdrop, THE FOLLY is visceral mystery and family drama, a dark examination of love, loyalty, guilt and possession that draws on the very real horror of betrayal by those closest to us, by those we love the best.
Dark bleatings, my lovely tribe. After waiting for what felt like a cruel length of time (thanks Amazon!), my copy of Amor’s newest work FINALLY arrived, and I devoured it. Gobbled it up like a greedy little troll, I did. There’s just something about Amor’s writing that makes her books impossible to put down. I *may* have recently just gone ahead and ordered all of her works, despite my ever-growing, eternal TBR pile.
This is a ghostly story, and I’m not typically a huge fan of a ghostly tale, to tell the truth. It’s one of the least interesting horror subgenres to me because I don’t find ghosts very scary, and of all sections of supernatural horror, I often find it extremely tropey. Of course, for Gemma Amor, I made an exception and this went straight to the top of my TBR the second it arrived.
I was not disappointed.
This story got weird, you guys. Weird in a “that weirdo from Vivarium” kind of way. Weird in a “oh look, my flesh seems to be crawling” sort of way. I’m not sure that I can even explain exactly why, but the arrival of a character that seems to embody the protagonist’s dead mother just screwed with me in a way that never normally happens. I did not care for the way he appeared, the way he moved, and even worse – the way he left each scene. I was reading this in the bath and I swear that creep left me so cold that each time he made an appearance, I wanted to run the hot tap directly into my eyeballs.
As always, Amor’s ability to translate the complexities of trauma are outstanding. Our main character is in her 40s and gave up her shot at love and children because she instead devoted all of her energy into freeing her dad from prison, believing him wrongly convicted of her mother’s murder. I firstly can’t even begin to imagine the horror of finding a parent dead, nor can I imagine the subsequent horror of losing the living parent immediately afterwards as they’re swallowed up by the legal system and social justice. I can’t imagine what it’s like to finally get that parent back, only to then have to deal with further misery. Her dad is obviously not coming out of prison all smiles because… well, he’s been suffering prison. He’s still reeling from the death of his wife because he didn’t get the closure of her funeral. He hasn’t even seen her grave. Honestly, the levels of heartache are numerous, vast, and deep, and Amor weaves this tale like the master she is.
I was equal parts sad, spooked, tearful, and fearful. This is a horror story, after all, and nothing in horror is ever as straightforward as it initially appears. Like her previous works that I’ve read, this one will haunt me for quite a while.
PS. I’m STILL plagued by Full Immersion… will that book ever leave me?!
I’d recommend this to horror fans who enjoy a ghostly read, and those who particularly enjoy stories that really require engaging your empathy. If you’d like to check out the book or author, there are some links below for you:
Bleeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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