Jennifer Fawcett drops her debut into the thriller world, and it should come paired with a psychiatrist. Beneath the Stairs is creepily dark, giving me chills right out of the gate.
Exploring and adventuring out for hours as a kid is something that none of us are unfamiliar with. Beneath the Stairs brings you back to your childhood and allows you to immediately connect with the characters as they head out discovering the haunted past of the Octagon house in Sumner’s Mills. The home is the thing of nightmares. Ones that do more than just haunt your dreams. As you follow Clare with her friends Abby, Monica, and Lori, they stumble upon dark secrets that continue to draw them back to the house. A house that has more secrets than believable.
Following freaky circumstances between the friends they do what kids do, they tell their parents they are staying at each other’s homes so they can spend a night partying with older kids. Clare meets her crush and is in progress of becoming vulnerable when things get messy, and the course of their lives are changed forever. Abby becomes traumatized after a spine-chilling encounter that same night that ruins a friendship and forces a family to move.
Years later, Clare receives unwanted emails from Abby concerning their past and the Octagon house. Abby obsesses over the home and then is found unresponsive after a spooky suicide attempt. While trying to deal with the fallout of losing her job and a failed Chicago area relationship, Clare makes the trip to Sumner’s Mills to see what is happening.
Fawcett brings everything in this debut from lost love and redemption to the dark pasts and secrets that homes can contain. I easily pictured myself walking around the Octagon house and imagining every bit of the detail that Fawcett describes. The story is delivered amazingly, seemingly from a season veteran. Fawcett coordinates the timeline flawlessly, and it plays out great. The amount of creepiness in this book is phenomenal, not the kind of creepiness where you’re like I can’t read this, it’s too much. But the kind where you’re like no kid, don’t do it, don’t put your hand on the hot stove. You just know something bad is going to happen, but Fawcett throws some great curve balls.
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