BBOK REVIEW | REMAINS | ANDREW CULL

Today’s post is all about the atmospheric chiller Remains by Andrew Cull. Originally released in 2019 by IFWG Publishing. 

This is one the I picked up after seeing it on someone’s twitter post, I think it may have been Hailey Piper’s. Anyway I thought that that looked interesting so I went off to the place that I get my books and purchased it.

Grief is a black house. How far would you go? What horrors would you endure if it meant you might see the son you thought you'd lost forever? Driven to a breakdown by the brutal murder of her young son, Lucy Campbell had locked herself away, fallen deep inside herself, become a ghost haunting room 23b of the William Tuke Psychiatric Hospital. There she'd remained, until the whispering pulled her back, until she found herself once more sitting in her car, calling to the son she had lost, staring into the black panes of the now abandoned house where Alex had died. Tonight, someone is watching her back.

After the brutal killing of her son, Lucy Campbell’s world has contracted to the four walls of her grief. When we meet Lucy, she is preparing to enter the world again, after spending a period of time in a mental health facility. However, is it to move on with her life, or is it something else?

The world she once knew has moved on. She is estranged from her husband, and she spends her time watching the house where her son was murdered.

Cull spends a significant portion of this book developing both the character and the setting as Lucy becomes more and more embroiled in the idea that she can contact her dead son.

Grief and guilt permeate the pages of Remains as Lucy moves from meticulously planning how she is going to carry out the act of contacting her son, to the culmination of the story.

The story is split into two distinct parts. The initial set up is done in the first part, Grief is a Black House, whilst the second, Hope is a corpse, unleashes the horror.

Once you get past the opening period of development, this story becomes increasingly intense as the terror that Lucy experiences becomes more apparent.

Whilst short, Cull never wastes a word, building the tension with precision. There were times through this book where I had to actually take a break as the story ramps up its intensity.

I have purposefully stayed away from discussing story as I think that book is best experienced with as little information about the story as possible.

This book would be perfect for fans of Clay Mcleod Chapman as it treads similar territory to say, something like Ghost Eaters.