With each step the candlelight dwindled, darkness seeping around his feet like a dangerous riptide. Soon it felt like he was walking into a darkness so deep it was a solid thing, so he thrust out one hand and touched his fingers to the wall, scuffing his fingertips over its roughhewn surface. Every now and then, he would call out again, mainly because he couldn’t bear the silence, or the distant noises that sometimes broke it apart.

“Hello? Is anyone there? I need help.”

The Hungry Dark is Jen Williams’ latest thriller, her third now following Dog Rose Dirt and Games for Dead Girls (all standalone and unrelated). Her first two had elements of darker themes and folk horror; The Hungry Dark takes a much firmer stride into the supernatural, tugging along the murder-mystery element for company. It’s creepy, atmospheric, and insidious; everything I’ve come to expect from Williams’ thrillers. Don’t read this one just before bed…

Once again, we have a split time-line in The Hungry Dark – if you’re playing Jen Williams Bingo you can mark off that square, along with the Bad Things Happening to Kids square. We follow Ashley Whitelam in the past as we piece together a traumatic event that changed her life, and in the present, where she becomes embroiled in the case of a missing child. Ashley is a celebrated medium, and the first to call herself a fraud. Unbeknownst to her co-conspiratorial family members, she can see something, or somethings, but they’re a world away from the spirits her paying customers believe she channels. In an attempt to boost her celebrity status, her brother contacts the police and offers her services to aid their investigation into a missing child.

Ashley is a fantastic protagonist. She’s very much trapped in her life and on the face of things, seems quite a vulnerable person. It was fascinating following her growth throughout the story as she grapples with the family that cultivate this vulnerability, feeding her insecurities to keep her close as their source of income. She has lifted her family out of poverty, and there’s a great deal of familial guilt at play here; that, despite the fact that the catalyst for Ashley’s current circumstances was an extremely traumatic event, she can’t move on from that and heal as her family depend upon her.

The novel is set in the Lake District, and you can always depend upon Williams to bring her setting to life in the most atmospheric manner. I visited the Lakes once as a child; a day of drizzle, muted oranges and greys, lake shores and hilltops alike shrouded in mist. It was quiet, muffled; beautiful but austere somehow. It was a fleeting impression, and yet it all came back exactly with Williams’ portrayal of the place. Williams’ recent works, both her fantasy Talonsister and her last thriller Games for Dead Girls, had strong elements of folk tales and horror, and it was wonderful, albeit unsettling, to have this theme be such an integral force within this story again. In this instance, the folk element is tied intrinsically to the landscape of the lakes and the fells, exploring the folk horror notion that evil can be rooted within a specific place, personifying it in a sense. It’s this very essence that makes The Hungry Dark so successful creepy and unsettling; that there is something wrong with the very land beneath your feet and it warps those around you.

The thing with Williams writing, what really gets under my skin every time, is the relatability. Williams has a true gift for rendering the human condition. Her characters, their motives, drives, and foibles, are always so recognisable, so true to life and its little quirks. It is this that always immerses me so deeply in her writing. And of course that’s when a story truly gets to you, isn’t it, when it sinks its claws in you. The Hungry Dark is stifling and puzzling, and so thoroughly unsettling. I loved every creeping moment of Williams’ palpitating foray into supernatural horror.

The Hungry Dark is out this week from HarperCollins. You can order your copy on Bookshop.org

ARC provided by Susanna Peden from HarperCollins, in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the copy! All quotes used are taken from an ARC and are subject to change upon publication.