Book Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 / 5 stars)
Ana didn’t want to move to this town, but she couldn’t say no to her husband, Edwin. Now cooped up in an old home with a haunting past, she swears there are ghosts out to haunt her. But with her husband away most of the week, and a town not willing to give up its secrets, can she prove that she isn’t going crazy?
In a haunting tale about a young mother trying to make a home for her family, we are transported to Oak Avenue, whose past clings to the house with twisted fingers, after being buried away beneath the earth. The fear is real, the emotion palpable, and the rumors even worse. The reader feels for Ana, waiting for her to uncover this distant mystery.
The mystery is never fully solved, as with many terrorizing nightmares. The ghosts and warnings of Oak Avenue will always remain. They will linger forever, and the readers will feel that hanging in the air even as the story draws to a conclusion. Will Ana be okay? Will Edwin return to normal? What are the secrets that remain in Oak Avenue?
All of this couldn’t be answered in this short story, which is often the case for mysteries in the real world. Some people may find this frustrating though.
Just remember…don’t dig up doors from your backyard. They might just be haunted.
What’s it about?
A young wife and mother—new to this town and to its secrets—learns just how much she doesn’t know in this tingly tale of all the things hiding in the dark at the top of the stairs, from bestselling author Brandi Reeds.
While renovating her Victorian home, Ana Clementine finds an ornate door buried under forty years of earth. Once she restores it to the attic, she starts hearing whispers, her loving husband becomes a stranger, and her baby daughter learns a chilling new word. Maybe Ana has unlocked the house’s secrets. Or maybe she’s becoming just a little unhinged herself.
Brandi Reeds’s Oak Avenue is part of Dark Corners, a collection of seven heart-stopping short stories by bestselling authors who give you so many new reasons to be afraid. Each story can be read in a single sitting. Or, if you have the nerve, you can listen all by yourself in the dark.
E.S. Barrison 