Blackthorn Ashes was meant to be their forever home. For the first six families moving into the exclusive new housing development, it was a chance to live a peaceful life on the cliffs overlooking the Cornish sea, safe in the knowledge that it had been created just for them. But six weeks later, paradise is lost. Six people are dead. And Blackthorn Ashes is left abandoned and unfinished, its dark shadows hiding all manner of secrets. One of its surviving residents, Agnes Gale, is determined to find out the truth about what happened. Even if that truth is deadlier than she could have ever believed possible.

Let’s think of the logical evidence first: ‘Blackthorn Ashes was exclusive, that’s what he’d heard. Being built in stages to spread the expense, and to talk up that exclusivity. By the end of the year, eighteen houses would be perched on the cliff, the sea’s salt eating away at fancy floor-to-ceiling windows and white stone walls.’ Yet the environment decided to disregard these plans. ‘All the people were gone. Twelve half- built houses at the bottom of the estate were shrouded in tattered plastic. Each of the finished houses was a museum. The families left fast on the day of evacuation, no time for removal vans or bubble wrap and boxes.’

I’m pragmatic, rational and impulsive, with loads of working experience relating to the building regulations, planning applications etc I also believe in trolls and elves. Some things are solid and tangible and that’s how we always want them to be. No doubt, and no destruction. Take a house for example. Must be strong and safe. With a lovely garden. And surrounding properties that offer peace and quiet. Good neighbours are a bonus. No drama. And when you have your house then you will turn it into a home, and your family can sleep soundly. Because all is sorted and you are a proud provider, a protector. For Adrian Gale, from the sales team working on this project, that was the ambitious dream goal. Yet as the events before and after the abandonment unfold, he falls into a black hole as he realises that nothing can be real when nature and the past makes claims on logic.

His daughter Agnes focuses on what some people might call supernatural or unknown, and follows her intuition, sixth sense… She was back home after eleven years away, after losing her partner and lover Laura and a job in London. Aged nearly thirty she perceives the world and interacts with people in a different subtle manner, while navigating personal disaster unfolding around her, bringing back secrets and lies, and painful memories. All this while also trying to remember ‘You’re autistic, not contagious’. Laura’s return to the family’s fractured nest unsettles thirteen-year-old Christie who became used to being treated as the only child. The boy does not enjoy his nearly forgotten sister’s uncomfortable emotions; the premonition that something strange is happening at the Ashes. Not so subtle clashes between practical approach to building a housing estate and the sinister stuff affect their mother Ruth who swings between anger and despair, valiantly fighting for their future.

Sarah Hilary has a unique talent to look at the ordinary, and even the mundane, and see the invisible layers of truth hiding in the everyday things. Just like in her previous novel Fragile, equally gothic and unnervingly real, set in the central London, she takes on a certain backdrop or a location and transforms it into an eerie realism, often unsettling and disturbing, and leaves the reader wondering and feeling emotionally wrenched and overwhelmed. In a daring and moving way, I hasten to add. She is tough on her protagonists, too. They are not allowed to rest, or to run away from the situation that brings pain, questions, uncertainty. They have to process and understand what has happened to them and to their loved ones, and to the world around them. Hilary challenges memories, feelings, opinions and beliefs in the name of love because how else could she allow Gales to find some kind of solution and a way out of the trauma? She creates such powerful rich and striking characters to allow us and herself to comprehend and to empathise with the Gales family: broken, hurting, desperate to feel safe and loved; an epitome of ‘Everyone was running from something that bored or trapped or threatened them.’ They were not the only ones, though.

Am I too vague? Perhaps. Black Thorn (Bookshop.org) / Black Thorn (Amazon) was published on thirteenth of July, and that in itself is already quite spooky. A psychological thriller of unique beauty, dipping in and out of magical realism, with nods to Scandinavian mythology (ash is the tree of life), Celtic mythology (blackthorn is symbolic of protection and the overcoming of obstacles for a better future), and the Japanese concept /word of Akiya or empty houses. Sarah Hilary brings all these motives together and lays bare her soul: ‘The earth tells stories.’