Review: Sundial by Catriona Ward

Although Ward has been putting out amazing horror titles for seven years, she is perhaps now best known for The Last House on Needless Street. The book last year took the horror/thriller reading community by storm and performed that 'transcendence of the genre' which all publishers love to see, showing up on the BBC's Between the Covers and several Best of the Year roundups. In many respects, then, Sundial is something of the difficult second album (even though it's the fourth), and Needless Street does definitely haunt the story in some respects.

Sundial is the story of Rob and her family, both alive and deceased. It's a 'then and now' narrative in which she worries about her troubled daughter, Cassie, and how far she is emulating the violent tendencies her sister, Jack, exhibited as a young adult. The story is full of twists and turns, all about the secrets that are buried deep within a family and, potentially, within the genes.

The story is initially set in idyllic California suburbia, where the décor may be perfect and the lifestyle may be aspirational, but real life is rotten to the core. The action quickly shifts out to the Mojave Desert and Rob's old family ranch, where the isolation is real and ghosts seem to hide everywhere. Having never been to the desert, I found the setting strange and exciting, much like Cassie does. It's beautifully realised and described by Ward, and used to great effect to constantly undercut the maybe-genuine affection and warmth shared by the family who live there.

Beautiful setting and richly understood characters aside, Needless Street did mean I spent much of the second half of the novel looking out for the twists and reveals. There were points when I thought the book was going very Needless Street, and I think my experience of reading would have been better without that in the back of my head. Needless to say (see what I did there?), there are reveals aplenty in the book's final chapters and Ward does take us on a wild ride, but this book is very much its own beast. It reminded me strongly of We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver, maybe crossed with Smithy by Amanda Desiree. There is heart and emotion in this book, as we have come to expect from Ward, but there is more heartbreak than I expected, and I came away from it uncertain about whether these characters I'd come to love would be okay.

Sundial by Catriona Ward is a thrilling, horrific tour de force of storytelling and teasing. I was surprised at how much I came to love these questionably loveable characters, and how much I rooted for some of them to succeed, whatever the cost. It does come with a lot of trigger warnings (child abuse, domestic abuse, animal abuse) and parts of it are hard reading, but for me it was worth it for the journey Ward took me on.

Sundial by Catriona Ward is available for purchase here.

With thanks to the publishers and Netgalley.com for an electronic advanced review copy.