The Witch of Willow Hall is a perfectly spooky addition to your October reading list

Hester Fox’s The Witch of Willow Hall is a Gothic historical tale full of ghostly figures, tragedy and witchcraft, arriving just in time for Halloween.

Now that fall is officially here, it’s time for sweaters, scary stories and all manner of things that go bump in the night.

Luckily, Hester Fox’s debut novel, The Witch of Willow Hall, will more than satisfy all your spooky literary cravings for the season. A Gothic tale full of romance, scandals and a house that may or may not be haunted, it’s both deeply creepy and meticulously well plotted, with plenty of shocking revelations and satisfying twists.

The story follows Lydia Montrose and her family as they leave Boston in the wake of a massive scandal and move to the rural estate of Willow Hall. (This initial event, which drives much of the novel’s early plot and character interactions is slowly revealed piecemeal over the course of the book.) Unbeknownst to Lydia, the house has a dark history and she herself possesses some rather powerful supernatural abilities, as the living descendant of one of the witches of Salem.

The combination of those two things… does not go well. Surprise!

The Witch of Willow Hall has a little bit of everything, from a surprisingly charming slow-burn romance and a disturbing sibling rivalry to betrayal, blackmail, incest, and death. It’s heavily atmospheric feel makes the nineteenth-century setting come alive, and the house itself feels like a character in its own right. (Let’s just say that I wouldn’t necessarily want to go there.) It just feels like a book that’s meant to be read around Halloween, and though it doesn’t have what we might refer to as jump scares, it’s creepy as heck. There’s a consistently escalating sense of dread and a lot of suspense.

Slow-going at times, this novel is definitely for those with a love of detail and a lot of patience. But the payoff is largely worth it in the end. Save for the fact that the Montrose family outside of Lydia could probably use a bit more time in the spotlight, only to make their actions/choices more understandable. But on the whole, the story is very satisfying, and the folks that deserve comeuppances receive them.

The most appealing part of The Witch of Willow Hall is definitely its heroine. Lydia is smart, sympathetic and selfless, bearing repeated familial tragedies with remarkable grace and fortitude. Her devotion to those she loves is admirable, particularly when compared to the behavior of her sister Catherine, a walking scandal with no respect for propriety. (And who also happens to be the reason the Montroses are driven out of Boston to begin with.)

As Lydia struggles to figure out the truth about the strange visions she sees around Willow Hall and deal with yet another family tragedy, she does have one ray of hope: Her relationship with her father’s business partner John Barrett. This being a Gothic sort of story, Barrett has his own personal demons haunting him, but the two of them are pretty adorable together, even as they navigate totally predictable roadblocks that have surprisingly little to do with Lydia’s potentially witchy abilities. Luckily, Barrett is pretty dreamy in addition to being emotionally tortured, so if a Mr. Rochester-light type does it for you, run, don’t walk to this novel.

Fair warning, however, for all that the novel is titled The Witch of Willow Hall, there’s very little witchcraft in it. Sure, it turns out that there’s a distinct connection between Lydia’s family and the Salem witches, but there’s not much of what most readers would normally call “magic” here. (Though there are a thoroughly surprising amount of ghosts.) However, the history of the time period generally and the Montrose family specifically is fascinating, and the stifling atmosphere surrounding any mention of witchy matters tells a story all its own.

Grab a blanket, a PSL and wait for a rainy night to dig into this enjoyably spooky tale. I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of story Hester Fox tells next.

The Witch of Willow Hall is available wherever books are sold and out now.