You thought you were home alone.

Anya is enjoying a relaxing bath when she hears a noise coming from the ceiling. Through the open bathroom door, she sees the attic hatch swing down, and a masked figure drops to the floor. Thirty seconds later, Anya is dead.

You’re not afraid of being alone in the dark. You’re afraid you’re not alone.

Across town, Anya’s old school friend, Julia, sees an online video of a masked figure climbing out of an attic. She suddenly realizes why the footage is eerily familiar: it was filmed inside her house in a luxury gated community, designed to keep intruders out.

And now your worst fears are coming true.

Why would a stranger target Julia? Unless of course, it’s not a stranger at all.

Like many people, I used to have this strange fascination with true crime. Being a child of the 80s, serial killers were very prolific at that time, and so I was constantly terrified that I or someone I loved would be targeted by one. I carried that with me for years, spending way too much time learning everything I could about them. That said, a couple of years ago, there was a television show here in the US titled “Phrogger: Hider in My House” that focused on people who learned that someone had been living in their attic, crawlspace, or within the walls of their homes without them knowing until it turned deadly. When I read the synopsis of this book, I immediately thought of that show. While there are references to some of the real-life cases in the book, it ended up being about something completely different and much less creepy than I’d hoped.

The story kicks off with a bang as we meet Anya, a woman who is taking a bath and then dies after encountering a masked intruder who had been hiding in her attic. It’s a great setup and promises that we are about to get into something dark and scary, but honestly, I felt the first chapter was the creepiest part of the book.

After Anya’s death, we are introduced to Julia, a former school friend of Anya’s who has recently moved back to Ireland with her ex-husband and two kids after living in the US for several years. The kids aren’t happy about moving states and don’t totally understand why they had to move – and neither do we. All we know is that something happened with Julia’s daughter and a girl at her school, and Julia felt the need to move (the reasons come to light later in the book). As Julia and her family settle in, her daughter finds a video on TikTok of a man lowering himself from an attic and then creeping around a house, and upon further inspection, they realize that it is their house. At first, they toss it off as someone following a trend and assume it was the previous owner, but when more videos begin to pop up, Julia is afraid she and her family might be being targeted by someone and that whoever is doing this might be responsible for Anya’s death.

On the plus side, the characters are well-developed and relatable. I enjoyed Julia’s relationship with her friend Eleanor. I also liked the backstory of the “dark secret” that plagued Julia and her friends – a secret they feel might be related to what happened to Anya and what is happening to Julia and her family. I also liked the complex dynamic of Julia’s family and learning about the secret that caused them to move from San Diego back to Dublin.

This one is well-written, but as I mentioned earlier, it wasn’t as creepy as I’d hoped. The thought of someone living in your attic without your knowledge is unsettling, but the “someone in the attic” plot point was kind of weak.

Another thing that was kind of “meh” to me was the reveal of who was behind everything. It was pretty obvious very early on in the book that it was one of two people, and about halfway in, I was certain of who it was. Most of the book is the author throwing in characters and other plot points to redirect us. Once the reveal happened, I was kind of annoyed and felt that a lot of time had been wasted going in circles.

Overall, I found this one to be a little annoying. I didn’t find it particularly scary; honestly, it felt like it went in circles for a good portion of the book. It didn’t hold many surprises and played out more like a mystery than an intense thriller. If you enjoy a good mystery, this might be for you. For me, I found it to be just okay.

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