A small neighborhood mysteriously disappears behind a strange veil, confounding local and national media. Twenty years later, the disappeared town is something of a novelty and the subject of investigations that straddled the line between scientific and paranormal. This area is known as “The Velkwood Vicinity” lending another layer of mystery and gravitas to the situation. When a paranormal researcher named Jack connects with Talitha Velkwood, one of those three girls to escape the cosmic event of her hometown, he tries to convince her to cross over the barrier into where her hometown was? Is?
The Velkwood Vicinity was the topic of occult theorists, tabloid one-hour documentaries, and even some pseudo-scientific investigations as the block of homes disappeared behind a near-impenetrable veil that only three survivors could enter—and only one has in the past twenty years, until now.
Talitha Velkwood has avoided anything to do with the tragedy that took her mother and eight-year-old sister, drifting from one job to another, never settling anywhere or with anyone, feeling as trapped by her past as if she was still there in the small town she so desperately wanted to escape from. When a new researcher tracks her down and offers to pay her to come back to enter the vicinity, Talitha claims she’s just doing it for the money. Of all the crackpot theories over the years, no one has discovered what happened the night Talitha, her estranged, former best friend Brett, and Grace, escaped their homes twenty years ago. Will she finally get the answers she’s been looking for all these years, or is this just another dead end?
Award-winning author Gwendolyn Kiste has created a suburban ghost story about a small town that trapped three young women who must confront the past if they’re going to have a future.
The “Velkwood Vicinity” is a small neighborhood, only about 13 residents and built in the late 1980s. Talitha has tried to put everything about her hometown behind her and keep it in the past. She has maintained the most tenuous of relationships with her “best friend” Brett over the years, but they moved in rather different directions in their social lives and careers. When Jack finds her, Talitha is at a crossroads with uncertainty ahead of her so she decides to finally revisit the location of the neighborhood where she grew up.
The novel is told largely from Talitha’s point of view and Kiste did a great job of putting the reader inside her head. Talitha’s frustrations, fears, misgivings, anger…all of her emotions allow for a great deal of empathy to built up in her character. Some of that empathy is built up because of her relationship with Brett. As we learn more about their past, their relationship proves to be much more complex than just best friends. Brett was abused by her stepfather and had a contentious relationship with Talitha’s mother. The third friend to escape, Grace, gets very little focus on the novel. At some point in the twenty years prior to the “present” of the novel, Grace crossed over the border into the ghostly neighborhood and returned, but eschewed all human connections even those of her two best friends.
Worry not, Kiste does get into the ghostly neighborhood and reveals what the neighborhood beyond the border actually is like in the “present” timeframe of the novel. It is an interesting revelation behind the veil, but I won’t go into too much detail except to say that Talitha crosses the veil multiple times over the course of the novel. Kiste weaves flashbacks and present timeline together almost too seamlessly in the middle of conversations. There were times I had to re-read passages to get a handle on whether or not the story was happening in the past or if it was the present.
This is a fascinating novel in so many ways. Kiste’s focus on the complex relationship between Talitha and Brett is the heart and emotional core of the novel. Layers of darkness cover the novel, layers of pain, and a sinister undercurrent of the Viel give this a creepy vibe. The pacing of the novel kept the pages and story moving along quite nicely, I felt a strong sense of urgency every time I opened the book. That’s an element I admired in the previous two novels I read by Gwendolyn Kiste and the urgency of the story felt perhaps even stronger here in The Haunting of Velkwood.
I did; however, have a few of minor issues with the novel. I felt as if a little too much was left unsaid. The novel was told so much from Talitha’s point of view that not enough background or perspective was given to the story. I suppose I can put it this way…if you come across a couple of people who are long-time friends they have a certain language, a certain history together that so much can be communicated between the two without anything being said or only a few words being shared between the two people but they are able to convey so much between each other in that shared history. At times I felt like an outsider looking into Talitha’s life, as if she was hesitant to share too much with us as the reader. I get people not wanting to share too much, but in a novel, a little more needs to be shared. That same theme carried over to what led to the “disappearance” of Velkwood, many hints were given and I suppose the reader could surmise what occurred, but I would have appreciated something more definitive. Lastly, Talitha’s last name is “Velkwood” as is the neighborhood and that to me seems like something worthy of explanation, but that naming connection was just left out there to hang in the wind.
I realize that was kind of a large paragraph that wasn’t exactly positive, but I did enjoy the novel a great deal. The elements that worked, worked extremely well. A strong, powerful sense of foreboding hung over the entire novel that set a great tone. Talitha and Brett’s relationship, great stuff, too. I loved the complexity there and how they both pushed each other away, but were ultimately drawn to each other.
The Haunting of Velkwood is a captivating and enjoyable, if at small times, frustrating horror novel. It is a novel that carries on some of themes of Kiste’s previous novels, but shows the maturity and growth of an assured writer. I’m excited to see what is next from her.
© 2024 Rob H. Bedford
Saga Press | Hardcover
March 2024 | 256 Pages
https://www.gwendolynkiste.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
