Friday, October 9, 2015

More Than You Know by Beth Gutcheon



More Than You Know is a novel that lies somewhere between a ghost story and a romance.  In the small coastal town of Dundee, Maine sits an old home referred to as "the Schoolhouse."  This building was once a schoolhouse on the nearby Beal Island and was moved to the mainland by an enterprising man who intended to rent the house to vacationers in the summer months.  Though he attempted several times, the families who had come to stay left almost immediately after arriving; demanding their money back without saying why.

The book is told in two parts: from the point of view of an elderly woman looking back on the summer she met the love of her life and as historical blurbs from a family who lives on Beal Island. We see flashbacks to the life of Claris Haskell- a woman stuck in an unhappy marriage, bound to a lonely life on Beal island away from her family. You learn about young Hannah, a teenager from Boston, who is staying with her half brother and reproving stepmother in the Schoolhouse for the summer.  She falls in love with local badboy Conary Crocker and the two soon find that they have more than just a mutual attraction- they can both see the malevolent spirit that haunts the Schoolhouse and Beal Island.  Soon Hannah discovers that a grisly murder was committed on Beal Island and was blamed on Haskell's daughter.  Could this murder be connected to the apparitions Hannah and Conary keep experiencing?

More Than You Know is the perfect creepy read for a dark October night.