3 reasons Katie Alender’s Gothic YA novel The Companion is worth your time

Katie Alender’s super creepy new thriller The Companion is the sort of Gothic horror that’ll make it just a little bit harder to sleep tonight.

Spooky season is officially still a few months away, but you can give yourself a proper chilling scare to close out summer with Katie Alender’s new novel The Companion. A rare contemporary Gothic YA horror story, the novel is dark, twisty, and utterly compelling from beginning to end.

The Companion follows the story of sixteen-year-old Margot, the lone survivor of a terrible car accident that killed her parents and both of her sisters. Without any family to speak of, she’s shuffled off to an orphanage, and eventually adopted by a rich family with a remote country mansion. The other orphans think she’s lucky – after all, how random is it that some guy her father once rescued from drowning would give her a new home at his posh estate?

But, as is always the case in stories like this, things aren’t exactly what they seem.

You see, part of the reason the Suttons adopted Margot was so that she could be a companion to their existing daughter, Agatha, who has been rendered largely uncommunicative thanks to a mysterious illness. And soon, strange things begin happening in the house – things that play tricks on Margot’s mind and make her wonder whether she’s losing it, or actually in danger.

An exciting, fast-paced thriller, The Companion is difficult to put down and makes for a great transition into the darker and more frightening books of Fall. Here are three reasons this novel is worth your time.

A dark, twisty plot

The best part about The Companion is the story’s ability to surprise you. Most Gothic horror tales, generally, tend to follow certain formats and include certain tropes. This novel definitely features all those elements but deploys them in such a way that you’re never quite sure what you’re looking at.

Is Margot truly losing her mind? Is Agatha dangerous? Is Sutton Place haunted? Can we trust any of the adults in this tale? And what about the creepy locked gardens out behind the house? Eventually, we feel as lost and unsettled as Margot herself does and are often unsure of what we, as readers should believe. It constantly shifting plot makes The Companion difficult to put down, and will likely leave you reading long into the night.

A likable, but possibly untrustworthy heroine

Any Gothic horror tale is only as good as its protagonist. And Margot is pretty great.

A true survivor, she’s willing to do whatever it takes to avoid getting sent to the state institution, even if it means making nice with a family that sort of seems to view her as little more than a servant. But the novel also takes pains to show us Margot reclaiming parts of herself and her personality

The Companion smartly introduces to Margot well before she arrives at the Suttons’ home, and allows us to get a sense of who she is before all these wild external circumstances are thrust upon her. It also clues us in early on that Margot may not be the most reliable of narrators – she has terrible dreams and suffers from all kinds of PTSD and trauma in the wake of her near-death experience. She sometimes blacks out or loses time, and her memory often seems to have holes in it. As much as we might want to believe her…there’s significant evidence that maybe we shouldn’t.

A properly creepy atmosphere

There’s so much that’s genuinely frightening about The Companion, but nothing so much as its setting, a dank, spooky pile that definitely feels as though it carries a legacy of darkness in its walls. With secret rooms, hidden dumbwaiters, and a garden full of overgrown graves, it’s certainly easy to understand how someone – anyone – might feel trapped inside its walls.  Alender’s descriptions are lush and vivid and you’ll feel as though you’re creeping along dark hallways and breaking into locked rooms with Margot. What secrets is the Sutton house hiding? What is the meaning behind the repeatedly dark moments in family history? And why hasn’t anyone just sold this place and moved to an area with consistently functioning WiFi? You may guess the answer, but The Companion’s ending twists – which come fast and furious in its final chapters – are definitely earned ones.

The Companion is now available. Let us know if you plan to give it a look!