Carfax House

A Christmas Ghost Story

By: Shani Struthers

Narrated by: Penny Scott-Andrews

Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

From the best-selling author of the best-selling Psychic Surveys and This Haunted World series, comes a Christmas ghost story to chill your bones!

A renovation. In the countryside. Just over an hour's train ride from London.

An ideal family home. Sold unseen. At auction.

Married couple Al and Liz Greenaway love London, but when they discover an impressive country property for sale in need of some TLC, for the same price as their London flat, they decide to go for it. For them, life is all about reinventing themselves and keeping things fresh, and this house marks an exciting new chapter.

In the week running up to Christmas, it is Liz who finds herself at Carfax House, alone. Al's held up with work. No matter, there's plenty to occupy her before he arrives, getting it ready for the festive season. A fine house. Once. Solitary, romantic, isolated, and quiet. So quiet that, for the first time in years, Liz can hear her own thoughts as long buried memories emerge. And there's an echo in them, a whisper...

For someone else in the house, memories are emerging too.

Carfax House - what if it's haunted?

©2020 Shani Struthers (P)2020 Shani Struthers

Loved the story, really dislike the narrator

This was my first experience with this narrator. I should have stopped here. In this narration, the narrator speaks to properly, over enunciating every single word. I tuned her out at one point, and the next thing I know, the book is over and I have no idea how it ended or how the main character was even able to resolve the issue. Just flat out annoying narration.

I will have to go back and read the actual book for this one.

Carfax House

Al and Liz have purchased an old mansion, sight unseen, in order to restore it to its former glory and get away from the rat race of London. When Liz decides that she wants to be in the house by Christmas, little does she know what she will encounter. Since Al is involved in an important murder trial, Liz goes by herself to get things set up for the holiday. Soon, she starts to imagine things and her emotions run rampant. Is the house haunted?

This wasn't so much a ghost story as a tale of mental illness (in my opinion). As Liz comes to realize things about her own childhood, she discovers a grave outside the house and she is determined to find out more about the woman buried there. My main complaint with the story is that once Liz begins to remember things about her past, the viewpoint switches to the mysterious woman, Josephina. To me, the jump was a little too abrupt and I would have liked more insight into how Liz learned the truth about the woman.

The narrator did a good job, but her "posh" accent was a little difficult for this southern girl to decipher at times, especially when Liz's emotions got out of hand. All in all, not a bad book, but not what I was expecting from a ghost story or from this author. I was given the chance to listen to the audiobook version by the author/narrator/publisher and chose to review it.