From New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong comes a nail-biting supernatural horror about a haunted lakeside property and twisted family secrets.

When Samantha Payne’s grandfather dies, she figures she won’t even get a mention in the will. After all, she hasn’t seen him in fourteen years, not since her father took his own life after being accused of murdering a child at their lakefront cottage. Her grandfather always insisted her father was innocent, despite Sam having caught him burying the child’s body, his clothing streaked with blood.

But when she does attend the reading of the will at the behest of her aunt, she discovers that her grandfather left her the very valuable lakefront property where the family cottage sits. There’s one catch: Sam needs to stay in the cottage for a month. To finally face the fact she was wrong and her father was innocent, in her grandfather's words.

Traveling to Paynes Hollow, Sam is faced with the realities of her childhood and the secrets kept hidden in the shadows of her memories. When her aunt goes missing a couple days into their stay, Sam begins to question everything again. Plagued by nightmares and paranoia, she begins hearing sounds in the forest and seeing shapes crawling from the water as the rippling waves of the lake promise something unspeakably dark lurking just below their surface.

Samantha Payne’s father was a murderer based on her eye-witness testimony as a child. The result was she and her mother were disowned by her paternal grandfather who always insisted Sam was wrong and her father was innocent. Since that time she has never returned to the family vacation spot, Payne’s Hollow, but now her grandfather, in death, is forcing her to return and confront her memories. Sam’s mother is suffering early onset dementia and to keep her in the nice assisted living home and on the trial medication that seems to be helping, Sam needs money and her grandfather’s will gives her the opportunity of inheriting $10 million but only if she spends a month in Payne’s Hollow at the family cabin  where she witnessed her father burying the boy he was accused of murdering.

I am not a big fan of horror though since I am a big fan of Kelley Armstrong I gave this a try. Truthfully this turned out to be more suspense than what I think of as horror though there are supernatural elements to the mystery.  The story moves along at a good pace, I read this in one day, and the conclusion was both a bit surprising in terms of the murder and totally satisfying in terms of Sam’s family relations. Like all of Ms Armstrong’s work that I have read this one is highly recommended. ~~ Stephanie L Bannon

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