Review – Sundial by Catriona Ward

I received this book for free from the publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Sundial by Catriona Ward
Published by Tor Nightfire on March 1, 2022
Genres: Fiction / Horror
Pages: 304
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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Sundial is a new, twisty psychological horror novel from Catriona Ward, internationally bestselling author of The Last House on Needless Street.

You can't escape what's in your blood...

All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind.

She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice.

Callie is worried about her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely, and speaks of past secrets. And Callie fears that only one of them will leave Sundial alive...

The mother and daughter embark on a dark, desert journey to the past in the hopes of redeeming their future.

I enjoyed this one! After enjoying The Last House on Needless Street, I was eager to try more of Catriona Ward’s work so I jumped at the chance to read this book. I was hooked by this story from the very beginning and it delivered all of the twisty horror that I hoped for. This was definitely a page-turner that shouldn’t be missed.

This story is told in two timelines from both Rob and her daughter Callie’s points of view. This is one of those stories that in order to understand what is going on in the present you must first understand what happened years ago. Rob’s life hasn’t been easy and the more that I learned the more I realized just how unorthodox her existence has been. Callie is just a little girl but her actions are more than a little concerning. I felt like Rob was doing the right thing when she decided to take Callie to Sundial to get to the bottom of things.

I was completely taken with this story. Rob’s childhood home of Sundial was a place where experiments were performed by Rob’s parents and other scientists. Rob had a twin sister, Jack, and the pair were inseparable until they got a little older. They spent their days on the ranch watching the dogs that were being experimented on and caring for the cows that helped to support their needs. Just when I thought that things couldn’t get worse, I would learn something that proved just how wrong I was.

I would highly recommend this book to others. I thought that the writing was wonderfully done and the story captivated me until the very end. I will definitely be reading more of this author’s work in the future.

I received an advanced review copy of this book from Tor Nightfire.

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