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readingforsanity · 9 months

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The Haunting of Maddy Clare | Simone St. James | Published 2012 | *SPOILERS*

A woman of limited meas and even less experience must confront a vengeful spirit in this haunting novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Broken Girls and The Sun Down Motel.

1920s England. Sarah Piper's lonely, threadbase existence changes when her temporary agency sends her to assist an obsessed ghost hunter. Alistair Gellis - rich, handsome and scarred by WWI - has been summoned to investigate the spirit of the 19-year-old maid Maddy Clare, who is said to haunt the barn where she committed suicide.

Maddy hated men in life, and she will not speak to them in death. But Sarah is unprepared to confront an angry ghost - real or imagined - on her own. She's even less prepared for the arrival of Alistair's associate, rough, unsettling Matthew Ryder, also a veteran of the trenches, whose scares go deeper than Sarah can reach.

Soon, Sarah is caught up in a desperate struggle. For Maddy's ghost is no hoax - she's real, she's angry and she has powers that defy all reason. Now, Sarah and Matthew must discover who Maddy was, where she came from, and what is driving her desire for vengeance - before she destroys them all...

Sarah Piper is an unassuming woman, living in 1920s London. With little to her name, she is available when a job comes through the agency she is assigned with. A young man, an author, is seeking a temporary assistant for an assignment. Though she is hesitant to meet a man with little knowledge as to why, she eventually agrees.

During the meeting she meets Alistair Gellis. He is needing a temporary assistant while his is out of town visiting his sister due to have a baby any day. The assignment in question? To visit a town called Waringstoke that has a ghost. Alistair is a "ghost hunter" of sorts, going to various locations with supposed hauntings and trying to prove or disprove them. While he's been successful in both, the two of them have no idea what they're up against.

A few days later, the duo heads to Waringstoke. The town is close-knit, and do not take kindly to the newcomers. On the first day of the investigation, they go see Mrs. Clare, the owner of the property where the supposed haunting takes place. She explains that it was her maid that killed herself by hanging in the barn, and now her ghost continues to haunt it. They've tried everything to get rid of her, but something is keeping Maddy Clare attached to the property unable to move on.

Alistair wants to get inside the barn, but Mrs. Clare has made it abundantly clear that Maddy does not like men. When they called in the vicar in order to exorcise her ghost, it did not end well for the man. Therefore, Mrs. Clare would prefer that Sarah is sent it. Sarah has no training in ghosts, and does not particularly believe in them. But she agrees to go inside. She sets up a tape recorder in the middle of the room, and has a camera around her neck, poised in order to take photos if the need arises.

Sarah is not prepared for what happens to her. Maddy Clare is real, and even makes her believe that the barn is on fire. Sarah is terrified, and runs back to the inn where she is staying with Alistair. During their debrief, Matthew Ryder, Alistair's assistant shows up. His sister has had her baby, and everything was well, so he rushed to Waringstoke in order to assist. It appears that Sarah's presence bothers him so, though she cannot fathom why.

As time goes on, the attraction that Sarah believed to be between her and Alistair is gone when he is reconnected with a long lost love named Evangeline Barry. She is married to a high profile man in town, and the two of them are just as much outsiders as the trio of ghost hunters. However, Sarah's attraction to Matthew continues to build, and so it seems to be reciprocated.

When Sarah's room is ransacked one day, Alistair offers to buy her new clothes after hers are all destroyed. While in a dressing room, Mrs. Barry visits her outside, hoping to receive word whether or not Maddy's ghost is really real, and if she has spoken to Sarah about any rumors. Sarah does not answer, nor does she wish too, and Evangeline says that if she can, to please meet her while she is walking her dog in order to discuss what Maddy could be saying to her.

As time goes on, Maddy's hauntings become clearer. After Maddy had grabbed Sarah on the arms and left bruises there, which allow her to see some sort of vision when touching that spot, she realizes that something terrible had happened to Maddy. Mrs. Clare says that she had just appeared on her back steps one day, and she and her husband had taken her in, and along with the Clare's and their housemaid, Mrs. Macready, they attempted to bring her back to some sort of semblance. But, nothing worked and now she is terrorizing the barn.

When the trio goes into the barn one night, Alistair goes into a sort of trance. It appears that Maddy has taken a liking to him and will only return him to his friends once Sarah has found her attackers. Maddy confesses that she was attacked by three men, and left for dead, and she wants Sarah to find them so she may exact her revenge.

Alistair's condition goes in and out, and when he is in his trance-like state, he believes he has back in the throngs of war. Sarah and Matthew's relationship continues to build though he is hesitant to show any sort of emotions toward her, only coming to her in the dead of night, though not often.

It is quickly apparent that Maddy, who had shown up on the Clare's doorstep covered in mud and unable to speak, that she had been buried alive after her attackers had left her for dead, and the vision is showing Sarah the location of her original grave. When Matthew and Sarah begin to question Bill Jarvis, the cemetery sexton, he goes missing the following day. It appears that they had incidentally found one of the three men.

Another man, named Roderick, was also involved. Maddy's ghost attempts to get to him as well, though Rod decides that he cannot run from her. He confesses to Sarah that it was Jarvis, himself and Tom Barry, Evangeline's husband, who had been involved in the attack. They had been hunting, and found Maddy walking through the woods. Evangeline had left to visit her mother for the last few weeks, and Tom said he was looking for a bit of fun. Rod is apologetic to his place in this, and says that it was Tom who had killed her, so had attempted to do so. They had buried her behind the Barry home, 6 feet from the well on the property, and that the red brick chimney that Maddy saw was that of the Barry home before it was fixed up and replaced a few years prior.

Matthew, who had gone to the Barry home to speak with Tom, may be in dangerous. Sarah finds Mrs. Barry, and tells her to summon the constable. When Sarah arrives on the property, she locates the original grave, but Tom Barry also finds her on the property. He had believed Maddy to be dead, and buried her. And for seven years, he thought he had gotten away with a crime. It wasn't until Roderick, the town's odd-job man, went to the Clare home and saw Maddy on the property, that they realized that she had gotten away and had been alive all this time.

When Maddy's body was found, there had been a note underneath her that said I WILL KILL THEM, though nobody knew what that meant at the time. When Tom goes to investigate the reason behind crows on his roof, he is attacked by Maddy Clare. It is then discovered that Roderick had also killed himself, unable to live with what he had done all those years ago.

Maddy comes to Sarah, who is released from the basement where she had been locked away when Tom went upstairs, and she is a normal ghost. She is no longer the ghastly version of herself. Sarah tells her that she can go now, and Maddy does, having finally found peace in her death.

Matthew begins recuperating from a blow to the head, and Sarah's cheekbone where she had been hit by the butt of the rifle Tom held, and Alistair, all begin to heal. Alistair and Evangeline begin seeing each other in secret, though this only lasts as long as the police investigation. Alistair tells Sarah that Matthew is crazy about her.

When the trio is finally released from police questioning and able to leave town, Alistair returns home for a brief period, deciding to take a break from ghost hunting for a time. Matthew states hes going to go back to his hometown to visit his family and requests that Sarah goes with him, and she agrees and thus begins Sarah's own happy ending.

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