In the early 1970's, a new folk music band emerged with so much promise that it seemed success would definitely follow them for quite some time. The band is called Windhollow Faire and consists of five members. Their first album garners enough attention that they are all set to write and record a second one. Band manager Tom Haring decides that the best way to insure they have the privacy to let their creativity emerge is to send them to a large old mansion in the country for the summer.

Wylding Hall is huge and located in the middle of nowhere just on the outskirts of a very small village. Tom makes arrangements for them to stay a full three months. Things seem to go well for a while. They produce several new songs that they know are astonishingly wonderful.

One of the band members, Julian Blake, is physically beautiful, painfully shy and almost supernaturally talented. He is also a bit odd in many ways and has taken to walking into the surrounding woods late at night. Julian is also engaging into things of the occult, but the rest of the band members do not know what he is really doing and they do not seem to care all that much. They will realize later that they should have paid much more attention to him.

The house itself is very strange. There are doors that are locked sometimes and at other times swing right open. It is easy to get lost while exploring the parts of the house where they are not living. Wylding Hall seems to almost be alive, a fact which becomes more important when the great mystery of that summer occurs.

Told in a narrative form from all of the people that were involved at the time, WYLDING HALL is a compelling tale filled with plenty of mysteries, chills, and overall creepiness that I fell in love with upon reading the first page. To me, WYLDING HALL is the perfect supernatural tale. While the page length is ideal for the type of story it is, I was still left with wanting more. I did not want to say goodbye to these characters. In addition, I simply wanted the story to keep going because of the tight hold it had over me. I could have happily continued reading for weeks on end.

Having said that, I must say that the ending of WYLDING HALL is rather satisfying. You will not find everything wrapped up in a nice, neat bow, but you are given the gift of deciding on your own what the possibilities are in what actually occurred that summer. Written in such a way as to make the story seem completely real, you will forget that it is a work of fiction.

If you happen to enjoy books in the supernatural genre, WYLDING HALL is the perfect way to lose yourself for a few hours. You may also find yourself wanting more, much as I did. Whatever else you may feel about WYLDING HALL; you will not be disappointed at the time you spent getting to know the members of Windhollow Faire and delving into the events of that long ago summer.

Book Summary

From the award-winning author of Waking the Moon, a short novel of unexpected terror

When the young members of a British acid-folk band are compelled by their manager to record their unique music, they hole up at Wylding Hall, an ancient country house with dark secrets. There they create the album that will make their reputation, but at a terrifying cost: Julian Blake, the group’s lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never seen or heard from again.

Now, years later, the surviving musicians, along with their friends and lovers—including a psychic, a photographer, and the band’s manager—meet with a young documentary filmmaker to tell their own versions of what happened that summer. But whose story is true? And what really happened to Julian Blake?