Review: The Haunting of Velkwood - Gwendolyn Kiste

Genre: Magical Realism, horror Published: Saga Press (Simon & Schuster), March 2024 My Rating: 4/5 stars

"In here it never feels like I belong among the living. But it doesn’t feel like I belong among the dead either."

The Haunting of Velkwood is one of those interesting books that sort of grew on my over time. Upon initially finishing it for the first time in 2024, I liked it, but didn’t love straight away. Yet the story, its images and themes kept haunting me, to the point where I began to suspect I might have judged it too harshly back when I first read it. Almost 3 years and a re-read later, I dó in fact appreciate it even more.

The Story:

The Haunting of Velkwood centers around an inexplicable (supernatural?) event 20 years ago, that turned an entire neighborhood into a ghost town. Literally…

The Velkwood Vicinity was the topic of occult theorists, tabloid one-hour documentaries, and even some pseudo-scientific investigations as the block of homes disappeared behind a near-impenetrable veil that only three survivors could enter. Three women, who used to live in the neighborhood and lost everything they had on that fateful day.

Now, 20 years after the fact, one of the three women returns to the scene of the event that has haunted her for decades...

What I loved:

This is going to be a hard one, because most of my love for this book boils down to a single word: vibes… From pages one, The Haunting of Velkwood crafts an atmosphere that absolutely perfectly captures (my experience//interpretation of) what it’s like to be trapped in the past as a result of trauma.

I have talked before about how sometimes fictional/magical-realist elements in novels can help to convey a kind of “ultra-truth. Sometimes intense experiences or emotions are difficult to capture in every-day words, and a fantastical metaphor can feel “more true” to the experience than the literal description of events…

The scenes where Talitha explores the Velkwood Vicinity felt like that to me. To use her own words “(…) exploring my own life like it’s an archeological dig.” They felt like such a true representation of being trapped in the aftereffects of a traumatic event, that it gave me chills on multiple occasions. The metaphor is so consistently perfect – from resigned melancholic atmosphere that permeates Velkwood, to the “ghosting effect” it has on anyone who lingers to long or returns to often – that thát alone was enough for this book to haunt me.

Contrary to come other reviews I’ve read, I personally loved the way the character of Talitha was written. She’s such a complex, deeply flawed and yet understandable person. The entire story is told through her POV, which drenches it in a layer of unreliability, nostalgic melancholy and almost painful longing. Talitha is so clearly the product of her circumstances; a 40-year-old woman stuck in time, arrested by the horrible events of her teens. She reads far younger than her 40-years, because she emotionally is far younger; she’s been stuck in survival mode, unable to develop past the moment that haunts her.

The way Gwendolyne Kiste captured this trauma-response, and so many other layered elements of grief in this book felt truly special to me. They are enough to mark this book among my favourites, despite the fact that I don’t consider it a 5-star read.

What I Didn't Love:

Despite my deep resonance and subjective love for this book, my reread also reminded me what kept me from giving it a 5-star rating.

My biggest problem is that I felt the book didn’t have enough length to support all the different (impactful) storylines it introduced. In other words: although I liked the individual ideas, “some darlings should’ve been cut” in the editing process.

The best example is the storylines of Grace and Enid, specifically Enid’s paranormal connection to death, and the way this relates to the Velkwood Incident. There’s an interesting idea behind this, but it’s nowhere close to developed enough to be a satisfying explanation. The fact that many of these side-plot relate to the same impactful themes as the main plot (parental- and queer trauma, domestic violence and abuse, loss of loved-ones etc.), simply means there isn’t enough room in 250 pages to do all of it justice.

Personally, I’d have cut the entire Grace-and-Enid portion, and left the explanation of the supernatural events completely up to mystery.

My second problem is with the ending. In one of the final scenes, one of the characters who’s been abusive throughout the entire story, has a “redemption-arc” by joining in to stand up to someone even worse than she is. Although the scene itself is fine, to me it was nowhere close to enough to earn her the redemption the book hints at. You cannot offset decades of trauma and pain by a single redeeming action, and the way the book implied this struck me the wrong way.

All that is to say that The Haunting of Velkwood is one of those “4-star favourites” for me: a book that had a special effect and impact on me, despite its imperfections.

Recommended for fans of Catfish Rolling, Michael Flanagan's The Haunting of Hill House (tv-show), or anyone who loves a good emotionally heavy ghost-story rooted in trauma, regret and escaping the traps of your past.

You can find this book here on Goodreads.