DRC Review: The Spirit Collection of Thorne Hall by J. Ann Thomas
Release date: 11 February 2025
Rating: 2.75
Synopsis: A young woman forced to live with ghosts in a mansion frozen in time must decide between forbidden love and the price of freedom in this gothic fantasy where Jane Eyre meets The Haunting of Bly Manor, perfect for fans of Starling House.
At Thorne Hall, a grand estate nestled in the Berkshires, fifteen restless spirits roam, bound within the mansion’s walls since the Gilded Age. Elegy Thorne bears the weight of her family’s curse to preserve the mansion as it was in the 1890s, using ancient folk songs to keep the spirits secret and silent in order to avoid deadly consequences.
When a mischievous child spirit wreaks havoc on the manor, the Thorne family calls upon their trusted preservationist to restore the mansion. He brings along his son, Atticus – a vibrant man full of life and ideas of modernization – and Elegy is captivated by him, igniting a longing for freedom she’s never dared to embrace.
Torn between her desire to follow her heart and her duty to her family and its legacy, Elegy begins searching for a way to release the spirit collection back to the afterlife and set both herself and the ghosts free. With century-old secrets, peculiar magic, and spirits both whimsical and deadly, Thorne Hall will haunt and enrapture readers—and you might just not want to leave.
Review
Thomas’ ghost story reminded me strongly of a horror movie with a similar plot from quite few years ago. While I liked the overarching story line and the characters (for the most part), I wasn’t really wowed with the book. This haunted house tale started strong but finished with quite a bit of disappointment.
Down to even the runic elements restricting the movement of the ghosts and the connection between some of the visitors to Thorne Hall and its ghostly inhabitants, The Spirit Collection of Thorne Hall perhaps too closely resembles the horror movie 13 Ghosts from 1960 and a remake from 2001. I like a good haunted house story, but I’d like to read one with some original elements in it.
Characters and narrative structure suffered a bit as well. The opener really hooked me, but the beginning does not connect to any elements in the story until the end, and even then, the points of connection have no allusions throughout the body of the story. I liked the reveal at the end, but it really needed some more interweaving in order be a seamless element. I did like the romantic story line; the romance and main plot just about shared the spotlight with a good balance.
Heads up for folks who don’t like reading explicit content—this book contains explicit language and sexual content as well as descriptive gore, with victims including children.
Thank you to Alcove Press, Penguin Random House Canada, and Netgalley for the DRC, for which I give my own, honest opinion.
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