Title: Shepherd’s Warning (The Elders Book 1)

Author: Cailyn Lloyd

Release date: July 10, 2019

 

Through my recent Twitter post, I had a few folks reach out and ask if I’d review their work. Cailyn was one such person. When she messaged, I mis-read her email and snagged ‘Shepherd’s Warning’ from Amazon, when she was in-fact emailing me about ‘Quinlan’s Secret’ the second book in the series! So, I dove in to read Book One and have already started Book Two!

What I liked: We pick up with a group of people renovating a house in the hopes of getting an HGTV show. The house has sat unoccupied for a long time, due to it’s history and the perception that it is haunted. The synopsis was very intriguing and Lloyd added some fantastic layers as the house begins to share its secrets.

One thing I always love in haunted house stories is the discovery of hidden rooms and early on in this one, we get this, along with a hand written book. That discovery will then lead to numerous other moments of terror for the rest of the story.

I really loved the back story that Lloyd introduced and with a professor who isn’t exactly who he says he is, we get a lot of great history in here.

What I didn’t like: I don’t know why, but for the life of me I struggled to keep track of who was who. The characters felt interchangeable for a solid stretch at the beginning and I had trouble remembering the relationship each one had with the others. This came across a lot of the time with a lot of throw away dialogue. There were portions where the conversations just felt included without any real purpose at times.

The biggest thing I struggled with the blatant disregard the characters had to the haunted house aspect for a good portion of the book. Something would happen, it would be significant, and then it would be completely forgotten or pushed aside. I can’t say too much about this, as I don’t want to fall into spoiler territory, but it happened a number of times and it was frustrating each time.

Why you should buy this: If haunted houses are you’re jam, then definitely do give this a go. Cailyn crafted some truly dark moments in here and the creep factor was high for almost the entire book. I’ll be interested to see just where this goes with book two, but for now, I’d suggest grabbing this one and and see why the tag line is “sometimes you shouldn’t go home…”

3.5/5