Daisy Pearce’s Something in the Walls is a haunting blend of psychological horror and folklore that crawls under your skin and stays there. It’s the kind of story that doesn’t rely on jump scares but instead feeds off unease, grief, and the dark spaces between what’s real and what’s imagined. Fans of The Witch, Midsommar, and The Haunting of Hill House will find this an unsettling yet fascinating experience.
The novel follows Mina, a newly certified child psychologist still reeling from her brother’s death years ago. Her life feels suffocating: a stagnant career, an emotionally distant fiancé, and an unrelenting heatwave that mirrors her internal unrest. Her only relief is attending a grief support group, where she meets journalist Sam Hunter. Sam carries his own ghosts, mourning the death of his daughter and desperate for meaning in the face of loss.
When Sam approaches Mina with an unusual proposition to investigate a thirteen-year-old girl named Alice Webber who claims to be haunted by a witch Mina reluctantly agrees. The girl lives in the isolated, folklore-soaked village of Banathel, where superstition and whispers of witchcraft still shape the townspeople’s beliefs. For Mina, it’s a chance to finally put her degree to use; for Sam, it could be the story that revives his dying career.
But what they find in Banathel is far more disturbing than either of them could have imagined. Alice’s behavior defies logic. The villagers are tense, secretive, and wary of outsiders. Strange sounds echo through the old Webber house, and something seems to be lurking in the shadows something that might not be human at all. As Mina and Sam dig deeper, they discover chilling truths about the town’s past and the dark legacy that binds it.
Pearce creates an atmosphere thick with dread. The descriptions of Banathel’s eerie isolation and the claustrophobic interiors of the Webber home are masterful. The book’s most terrifying moments come not from gore, but from suggestion the sense that something unspeakable is always just out of sight.
Mina’s psychological perspective adds depth to the horror. Her rational mind clashes with the irrational events unfolding around her, forcing her to confront both professional doubt and personal grief. The interplay between science and superstition becomes one of the novel’s most compelling themes, raising questions about how much we can ever truly understand the human mind and what happens when it’s pushed too far.
While some readers found the pacing uneven and the ending ambiguous, the ambiguity itself feels fitting for a story about belief, madness, and the unknown. The final act is both terrifying and tragic, revealing that sometimes the most horrifying things are not ghosts or demons, but the secrets people keep and the lengths they’ll go to preserve them.
Verdict:
Something in the Walls is a dark, atmospheric, and deeply unsettling read that blends psychological tension with folkloric horror. Daisy Pearce crafts a story that lingers long after the final page, making you question whether the evil we fear is truly supernatural or if it lives within us all.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – A chilling tale of grief, superstition, and the ghosts we create ourselves.
👉 Get your copy of Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce here: https://amzn.to/4o2MJFb
