• Author: E. Reyes
• Publisher: independently published
• Publishing year: 2020
• Number of pages: 167
• My rating: 3,5/5

Synopsis:

Cindy Flores, a twenty-one-year-old single mother, retail worker, and college student, inherits her grandmother’s home on Moon Creek Avenue after she passes away. Cindy’s father offers to pay the utilities until she graduates from college; doing whatever he can do so that she doesn’t go back to her abusive boyfriend.

At first, the home is comfortable, nostalgic of Cindy’s childhood at nana’s, and her daughter enjoys the home, too. But soon, ghosts randomly appear day and night, doors open and close, a streak of bad luck begins, Cindy and her daughter have unsettling nightmares, and Cindy’s mental state is pushed to the edge.

When Cindy’s video recording of paranormal activity goes viral on social media, she gets the attention of famous ghost hunters. Without anywhere else to turn, Cindy confides in their help to find out why she’s being haunted. A terrifying investigation leads to revelation and surprise.

Will she find the root of the evil being caused at her home on Moon Creek Avenue?

Review:

Ever felt you weren’t alone in your own house, like someone is watching you when you are in bed or in the shower?

In Devil’s Hill, these occurrences are real in the house on Moon Creek Avenue, where Cindy and her daughter Mallory just moved in. It was the house of her nana and was left to Cindy. Cindy is a single mother, dad not in the picture, and has to balance working at a grocery store as a cashier and studying online at home for a diploma. All goes well until strange things start happening in their house. A girl in a dirty gown appears in her bedroom, a wheezing man (walking on all fours) wants to grab Mallory from her wardrobe and then there is the boy outside, Sammy…

Suddenly Cindy and Mallory’s life gets turned upside down and without sleep out of fear, they have to start looking for an answer as to why these ghosts come for them.

But Cindy is not alone, her new (boy?)friend Ben helps her, a troop of ghost hunters and a medium come to her aid and then there’s Antonio, a curandero (shaman, healer) who is willing to help her find a solution!

What Reyes offers here with this story, going back to the town of Devil’s Hill (based on the town or city he lives in in Arizona) where a lot of his books are situated, is a genuine haunted house story with all the elements from the best horror movies we all know and love… Poltergeist, The Conjuring, Insidious and Thirteen Ghosts… Reyes’s love for horror movies and for Halloween is so clear in his books!

A few things that could have been a bit better (but did not spoil the entire experience of reading the novel though!) is the need of a little more in-depth of characters and some background and a little less repetition of certain sentences such as ‘the goosebumps and the hair standing up’… I guess some synonyms would help to avoid that.

Otherwise, another great Reyes novel. I have said it before, he can get far with his writing!