Review – The Haunting of Paynes Hollow by Kelley Armstrong (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Paranormal Horror
Length: 278 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: October 14, 2025
ASIN: B0DPV1KXGX
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from NetGalley
Rating: 4/5 stars
“When Samantha Payne’s grandfather dies, she figures she won’t even get a mention in the will. After all, she hasn’t seen him in fourteen years, not since her father took his own life after being accused of murdering a child at their lakefront cottage. Her grandfather always insisted her father was innocent, despite Sam having caught him burying the child’s body, his clothing streaked with blood.
But when she does attend the reading of the will at the behest of her aunt, she discovers that her grandfather left her the very valuable lakefront property where the family cottage sits. There’s one catch: Sam needs to stay in the cottage for a month. To finally face the fact she was wrong and her father was innocent, in her grandfather’s words.
Traveling to Paynes Hollow, Sam is faced with the realities of her childhood and the secrets kept hidden in the shadows of her memories. When her aunt goes missing a couple days into their stay, Sam begins to question everything again. Plagued by nightmares and paranoia, she begins hearing sounds in the forest and seeing shapes crawling from the water as the rippling waves of the lake promise something unspeakably dark lurking just below their surface.”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got an eGalley for this from NetGalley for review.
Thoughts: This was a well done paranormal mystery/horror. I enjoyed that this was based off of the Headless Horseman mythos and it made an excellent October/Halloween read. I am a big Armstrong fan and have read and enjoyed everything by her except her full Women of the Otherworld series (I read the first couple books in that series but didn’t care for it).
Sam is desperate for some cash. She had to drop out of medical school when her mother was diagnosed with dementia and needed special care. Now Sam is struggling to make ends meet and pay for her mother’s care. Then her grandfather dies…her grandfather who has always been convinced that Sam did not see her father murder the neighbor boy and bury the boy’s body in front of her. Her grandfather leaves her an estate worth $10 million with one catch. Sam must live on the property for a month, never leaving for more than an hour at a time. If she does that, she can sell the estate and use the money to both care for her ailing mother and return to medical school. How can she say no?
This was very well done, and I enjoyed the mystery here. This book straddles the line between fantasy horror and straight-up horror. It gets pretty creepy but is never outright terrifying. I will admit though, that I wanted the lights on and people around in my house when I was reading this.
I enjoyed Sam as a character; she was well done and easy to engage with. Armstrong does a wonderful job of making Sam out to be very logical but then having her fall into a trap of self doubt as things out at the estate get stranger and stranger. The supporting cast was also very well done. I enjoyed the caretaker Ben and how he interacted with both the estate and with Sam given their sorted past.
The fact that this ties in the Headless Horseman mythology along with some intriguing mythology around the Drowned and Water Horses was awesome. I love learning about new mythology, and some of the background here was intriguing and a bit obscure.
This is mostly a mystery, but there are some pretty creepy parts. There are eviscerated animals, creepy people in dark corners, characters that doubt their sanity, deaths, and some obviously crazy stuff going on it here. It was very well done. My only complaint would be that this felt a slow at times and that the way everything was tied up felt a bit contrived.
My Summary (4/5): Overall I really enjoyed this. I love that the Headless Horseman mythos comes in to play here. I enjoyed the characters and the remote and creepy setting. The mystery was well done and kept me guessing. My only complaint is that things get a slow at points, and the ending seemed a bit rushed and contrived. While this isn’t my favorite Armstrong book, it was still a very good one. Armstrong is one of my go-to authors and if you are looking for a creepy Halloween mystery read, this is a very good one.
