Stephanie Booth is shit out of luck and jolly well fucked. AKA homeless. And it’s not through any fault of her own. As far as we’re aware, she’s done all the right things in life. She kept her head down, and she got a good education. At the time the book opens, she’s just finished her university degree, but she’s unable to get a job outside of a bit of temping and handing out freebies. She’s recently broken up with her boyfriend and has moved out of his place. We get the impression that Stephanie’s parents are no longer around, other than an evil stepmother whom she refuses to go back to.
When she sees an advert in a shop window that says there are rooms available for rent in a house share for £40 a week. The fact that the ad specifies ‘women only’ doesn’t go unnoticed, and Stephanie can’t help but think it might be too good to be true. But she also realises that she might not find a better option than that.
It turns out that the reality is even worse than Stephanie could’ve possibly imagined. First of all, she’s stuck with the landlord from hell in the form of Knacker McGuire. Initially, Stephanie doesn’t even meet any of the other housemates. She’s aware they are there because she can hear them crying behind locked doors and speaking a language she doesn’t understand. Something is badly wrong. Stephanie wants to leave, but McGuire won’t give her deposit back. Without it, she can’t afford to move out and find a place elsewhere. Then Knacker’s cousin, Fergal, shows up. Fergal is even more terrifying than Knacker. Stephanie might be about to learn that this is the kind of place where no one gets out alive.
First things first. This is quite a hefty novel. It’s 600 pages long. But that didn’t bother me at first. The first two-thirds of the book absolutely flew by. I was gripped, the story was chugging along, and many of the chapters finished in a way that I had to keep reading. Stephanie is an easily likeable character who finds herself in an awful situation. As a reader, I felt helpless, as there’s nothing I can do but see how things unfold.
However, and this is a big however, the story would appear to come to a natural end around the 400-page mark. I found that puzzling, as there was quite a thick stack of pages in my right hand. What followed was what I’d describe as a long, meandering epilogue. While I flew through the first 400 pages, the remaining 200 felt like a bit of a slog. But I’m not going to mark the book down for that. My rating comes as a result of the first two-thirds of the novel. Adam Nevill is a tremendous writer, and I’d definitely read his work again.
My Goodreads rating: ★★★★☆ (4 stars)
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