Book review – THE SPIDER, by Maria Savva

The official blurb:

‘No one’s ever come out of that house alive…’

What lurks behind the door of 8 Goldfern Road?

Are you brave enough to step inside?

By entering the sinister house, George and Glen become entangled in a dangerous battle of wills.

“The Spider” is a story of obsession, infidelity, and broken dreams.

This darkly humorous mystery will appeal to fantasy and romance readers as well as those who love to hate spiders!

My review:

I’ve read many stories and books by Maria Savva, and I love her writing style. I especially love the way she writes stories that peer into the human psyche, and the dynamics of human relationships, very perceptively yet without judging anyone, allowing all the human shades of gray to show through. The Spider is her best work yet, blending the real and tangible world of troubled marriages, infidelity, disappointment with your place in the world, family trouble… all those regular things we might worry about… with a chilling and terrifically creepy paranormal story-line.

The lives of the characters in the story are nicely interwoven with the strange and frightening things that begin to happen after a run-in with a crazed serial killer in a very odd (and frightening!) house. There’s plenty of suspense and nightmarish things going on (I won’t go into detail here, so as not to spoil it!), while the characters’ real lives change, intertwine, and split apart. The psychological horror ramps up bit by bit, and because it’s all connected to such a real, everyday world, I always had that unsettling feeling that anything could happen…

As always, Maria Savva’s prose is clear and well-crafted, anchoring the reader firmly in time and place and creating believable, complex characters that feel real and as if you might know them in your own life. The paranormal thriller and suspense elements are also very well handled, propelling the story forward and adding shades of darkness and horror to the everyday trial and tribulations of the women and men caught up, sometimes more or less literally, in a spider’s web of deceit, danger, lust, and greed.

A fantastic read, and highly recommended.

thespider