Sundial

Rob has an interesting backstory. One filled with mysterious apparitions and violence. When she notices her oldest daughter, Callie, talking to what appears to be ghosts and collecting Animal bones she starts to worry. Is her perfect life falling apart? Rob knows exactly what to do. She takes Callie to Sundial, her family ranch. Sometimes our past comes back to haunt us, and there's no escape, but Rob will do anything to save both of her daughters.

Sundial by Catriona Ward is a psychological horror that digs its nails into you. I could not put this book down! It's full of twists and turns that throw the reader into a whirlwind of dread and terror. When you think you've figured it out, Ward pulls the rug from under your feet. With realistic characters and intense emotions, Sundial is a perfect roller coaster that plays with your emotions up until the very end.

It's hard to say much without spoilers but if you're a fan of psychological horror pick this book up. You will not be disappointed. Catriona Ward is becoming one of my new favorite horror writers.

Thank you to Tor Nightfire and Netgalley for the chance to read this arc!

Having read Ward's other work I knew that I enjoyed it but Needless Street was just not for me. Sundial was a chance to try out her work again and WOW it didn't disappoint.

Rob seems to have her life together - a home, a family, a husband - but behind closed doors her husband is abusive and her eldest daughter is showing troubling signs like collecting bones. To protect Callie from her husband she decides to bring her back to her childhood home Sundial.

This book was full of twists and honestly just delivered so well on the promise of psychological horror. It was such a delight to piece together any of the twists before they came but still managed to be surprised by pieces I didn't see coming.

read for strangeathon 2022: different format

okay so brother meets the push and the strangerville pack from the sims 4 😭 this had the messed up family dynamics and exploration of that isolated family with the evil child/unreliable narrator vibes or the push and the scientific desert testing of the sims 4 strangerville pack.

this book follows and mother and her child as they leave their home to take a hiatus in the desert at the mother's childhood home due to the fact that she believes her child, poisoned and virtually abuses her other child. the mother then begins to tell her daughter about her own childhood in the desert and is known to us as an unreliable narrator but we are unsure why for most of the book. we also get the perspective of the child but she is also a bit unreliable. the child take bones of animals and often see these animals and someone that is the pale version of her. they are like imagined friends but something feels off.

i really enjoyed the beginning where we are learning about the family and seeing why the mother takes her child to the desert, it gives classic domestic thriller/the push vibes and i was also really intrigued once they went to the desert but that part did start to drag for me a little bit and felt a bit long. this is similar to brother a bit with the slower family exploration. there is some animal testing on dogs which can be triggering for some but it didn't bother me personally. that part honestly interested me a lot and how that played out was so fascinating.

the ending was so fast paced and there was so many twist that kept me guessing what was going to happen next in both timelines and i love how everything aligned in the end. the writing was so good and you can really see the purpose of the slower parts to cause tension for the ending.

thank you to tor nightfire, catriona ward, and netgalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review 

Catriona Ward cements her position as The Queen of Unease with her new offering, Sundial. A tale of toxic motherhood and long held secrets.

Rob is a wife and mother who escaping her difficult childhood has set up home in suburbia with her husband Irving. But not all is as it seems! Behind the veneer of domesticity, Rob is a serial philanderer, and her eldest daughter is showing worrying tendencies that point to something being wrong! Very wrong!

After an inexplicable incident involving pills, and her two daughters, Rob decides it is time to return to her home of Sundial to set things right and attempt to revisit the events that have led to her current situation.

Full of intrigue and suspense, Sundial is a masterpiece of disquiet and unease, and from the very first page, the feeling of wrongness permeates from the page to give you a sense that nothing is what it seems.

The book itself took me two days to devour and I could not put it down, could not stop thinking about it until the story had revealed its secrets and showed me how the tale would evolve into its true nightmarish form. Catriona Ward???s previous book had me similarly gripped and I spent hours trying to puzzle the labyrinthine plot, and Sundial is much the same. However, I have quickly learnt to just follow the story without obsessing about what secrets lie below and let the tale unfold at its own pace to reveal the core of the story as its layers are peeled off, one by one.

There are so many things happening in the story. You have the story of Rob and her husband whose marriage is built on petty cruelties, each adding to something that is painful to watch, as he carefully manipulates everyone around him to join in his cruel games of misdirection and hate, and Rob responding to him. Irving is truly one of the most loathsome characters that I have met in fiction. He is never outright nasty, but you can feel it pulsing in every venomous act that he does.

Rob on the other hand can be equally as poisonous at times, and there is an underlying feeling of cruelty about her, and whilst she loves her daughters, she has a creeping sense of mistrust to her older daughter who speaks is emojis at the end of every sentence and collects the bones of dead animals.

The story is told from the point of view of Rob who imparts all her insecurities and scorn to the reader, but carefully hides them from her family, afraid they may be mistook for signs of weakness, particularly when Rob is playing his cruel mind games with her and currying favour with his eldest daughter to continue the miasma of vitriol that he surrounds himself in. However, there are times where we get the view of Callie, Rob???s eldest daughter, who may seem to be sweetness and light, yet holds darkly disturbing thoughts, especially to her younger sister, Annie.

With Sundial, Catriona Ward has carved out of the desert rock her place as a master of the disturbed as not a word is wasted. She will wrongfoot you at every juncture and just when you think you have the pieces in the right place, she will change the dimensions of the puzzle so that it doesn???t fit. Her prose is amazing, and it is not since I started reading Shirley Jackson novels many years ago that I have read anyone that has the same level of making all her characters seem to be so utterly awful yet utterly beguiling.

The narrative itself is cloying and claustrophobic yet gives the characters time to develop and explore their unusual circumstances whilst never once missing a beat and letting up its grip. Sundial is one of this years must read books that will have you gripped to the end of the story until its secrets are revealed