Review: The Noise by Allison A

Genre: Horror

Description:

“Angela Blau has a degenerative bone disease, but she was never warned her mind could deteriorate as well. There’s no other explanation for the footsteps coming from the second floor—footsteps her husband, Jack, never hears. And then there’s the ghosts who attack her at night, and townspeople who dig through the dirt like rabid animals and peer through her windows.

Maybe the ghosts and the townspeople are in her head—it wouldn’t be the first time she’s let her mind wander—but the noise has to be real, and she’d go up there and prove it if the stairs weren’t so rotted that she’d fall right through, Jack says.

Things get worse when Arlo, a lonely old man who lives ‘somewhere down the street,’ reveals a violent crime that occurred on the second floor. Against Jack’s warnings, Arlo indulges Angela’s growing obsession and pushes her to discover the true source of the noise, who exactly the townspeople are, and whether a traumatic incident that occurred four months ago, an incident Angela refuses to talk about, is to blame for all of it.”

Author:

This appears to be Allison A’s first published book. Information about her is limited with only the first name and last initial as her byline, no author page on Amazon or any information about her on Amazon’s page for this book. If you read the book, when you reach the acknowledgements, you might be able to figure a few things out about her. Her maiden name, a pretty good guess at what that last initial of A stands for, and that some parts of this book (but I’m guessing far from all of them) are things she’s experienced in real life.

Appraisal:

The author describes this book as a horror novel, but also says that at its core it is a book about coping with loss. In some ways I think it could be looked at as a thriller with a bit of supernatural or at least the appearance of such since the main character is constantly seeing and hearing what could be described as ghosts. What else would you call a being that you see and sometimes even talk to, yet no one else sees them? That’s what the main character, Angela, is experiencing, and isn’t quite sure what to make of it.

Figuring out what is going on was an interesting exercise. Let’s just say that it wasn’t all in Angela’s imagination, no matter what others might have thought. But it isn’t quite what Angela thought either. I’ll bet if you figure out the big picture it won’t be until late in the book, regardless of the clues that might have led you to the proper conclusion. I guess figuring what is going on makes this a bit of a mystery too. An interesting and unique read that could easily get you thinking about the big picture of this life and even whether there is a next life and what it might look like.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

FYI:

Some adult language.

Format/Typo Issues:

A small number of proofreading misses.

Rating: **** Four Stars

Reviewed by: BigAl

Approximate word count: 85-90,000 words