It Will Just Be Us

Sam Wakefield lives in the family mansion at the edge of a swamp, a decaying house with winding halls built by her ancestors. Ghosts fill its rooms, and their echoes tangle past and present so tightly that Sam struggles to tell them apart in her daily life. Locals say there is a door in Wakefield that never opens.

Her pregnant sister Elizabeth arrives to stay after a fight with her husband. Sam already has a difficult relationship with Elizabeth, and the visit coincides with a shift in the house. A new ghost appears: a faceless boy who threatens animals, terrorizes other children and follows Sam deep into the house with a knife.

The boy is tied to a locked, forgotten room that nobody enters. Sam understands that he is unlike the other ghosts, because he brings doom. As Elizabeth's due date nears, Sam has to uncover what the house is hiding before a baby is born into a place marked by death.

This is a supernatural thriller with a gothic setting, told in close third person around Sam. It leans on dread and a claustrophobic house, with the threat growing stronger as the pregnancy advances. Readers who like haunted-house horror and tense family relationships will find both here.