Book Review: Into The Grey

Author: Celine Kiernan

Series: -

UK Publisher: Walker 

Published: 2011

Format: Paperback (review copy)

I think the fire changed us – me and Dom. I think that’s how the boy was able to see us. Though he’d been there for every summer of our childhood, we’d only been stupid boys until then. Stupid, happy, ignorant boys. And what in hell would he have had in common with two stupid boys? But after the fire we were different. We were maybe a little bit like him. And so he saw us, at last, and he thought he’d found a home…

I picked up this book on the pretence of it being a haunting ghost story; it definitely fulfilled it's promise on that front, but it was just so much more than that. Rather than focussing on the ghost story itself, I believe that this book depicts the deterioration of Patrick Finnerty as his twin brother Dominick is being slowly taken away from him by the ghost of a young boy.

Kiernan beautifully depicts in her writing the strong bond between these two twin brothers, and this makes their separation all the more tragic. You see the trauma and the confusion that Pat is having to go through, and his slow descension into despair at the hurt that he is living with alone without the rest of his family to help him. The development on this front is absolutely fantastic, as you can clearly see Pat losing his grip on everything that he knows, and this isn't something that suddenly appears; it happens through a series of events and the loss of not knowing what to do next.

With regards to the ghost story itself, some of the scenes were so incredibly haunting, that I found myself quite afraid as to what was going to happen. The tension and suspense elements of this book were timed to perfection; it wasn't over baring or too obvious and I found myself getting rather creeped out by a lot of it.

Not having read a lot of books of this genre before, I was pleasantly surprised, and would mark this as a book to start off with if you're unfamiliar with ghost stories. This is one of those books that leaves you wanting more, and it has definitely encouraged me to delve deeper into the realms of the unknown.

Rating: ★★★★