The Wayward Girls by Amanda Mason

          3.5 Stars

The long hot summer of 1976 - you really had to be there.  Unfortunately Cathy and her children (Anto, Flor, Lucia, Bianca and Dan) are at Iron Sike Farm during this time.  Seemingly abandoned there by Joe and struggling not only for money but for acceptance in to the small Yorkshire community surrounding the farm things look grim for them.  They start to look even worse when a tapping starts in the walls, marbles rain down from nowhere in the house and furniture begins moving on it's own.  When the local press publicise the events a paranormal research society becomes interested and moves to the area to investigate.  The investigation seemingly ends in tragedy; for the Corvino family but also for the investigators.

Fast forward to the present day and interest in the Haunting At Iron Sike Farm has resurfaced and a University An-Soc wants to re-open the investigations.  Even this is not what it seems as there is a personal element to the investigation that seems certain to skew the resulting observations.

Unfortunately, the swapping between the two timelines serves only to dilute the other correspondingly.  Initially we start in the modern day and it certainly seems like something supernatural is happening at the farm.  Somehow the tension built in the opening chapter is dissipated completely by meeting Lucy and Cathy in the modern day and I found it hard to find the same level of intrigue again.

Of the two time frames the 1976 one is the more interesting.  Not the effects of the haunting but the interplay between Lucia and her elder sister Bianca; the way they relate to the rest of the family, the investigation team and the wider community. 

The haunting itself bears a striking resemblance to the real-life Enfield Haunting; along with the opposing viewpoints about it's veracity.  To be honest, I feel this spoilt things a little for me as events that happen in the farm bore a striking resemblance to the reported activity in the Suburban house and also the events depicted in fictionalised televisations of the reports.

There are a few twists and turns to the story - some psychological, some far more prosaic and "real".  The pacing is patchy throughout, not in a build and dissipate tension way but in a much more stuttery pattern.  I wish I could say that by lingering on seemingly unimportant sections of dialogue or describing a scene in microscopic detail becomes relevant later in the story.  Unfortunately, it doesn't.  For me, the story itself is less important that the relationship between the sisters - that is what kept me reading.

THIS IS AN HONEST REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED VIA READERS FIRST.