Reading Blood Harvest was like a breath of fresh, though unpure, air after my recent struggle with The Night Circus. Fast-paced, economically written and never losing my interest for a minute – it was just the book I needed after the density of my previous read.

Trying to describe this novel would involve too many snarled threads so I’ll keep it simple. There is a house near a graveyard, children seeing and hearing spooky “monsters”, unexplained disappearances of little girls, harvest rituals, an unconventional vicar, a beautiful and handicapped psychiatrist, madness, insularity, crypts and nights on the moors.

These threads all miraculously fuse together to form a riveting and truly spine chilling novel. This is the first book I’ve read in quite a while that had me looking over my shoulder and seriously wishing I hadn’t read it before bed. Bolton has a way of injecting the supernatural into the story in a very believable way.

Her characters are not quite lovable, but sympathetic and their motives are understandable. Her writing is like a wildfire burning its way through the pages – she is skilled at crafting page-turners.

I will warn those of you who are distressed by descriptions of violence or harm against children to stay far away from this book as this issue is one of the central themes of the novel, though I don’t think Bolton exploits it for entertainment purposes.

I haven’t read a good thriller since the spring and I thank Helen at She Reads Novels for introducing me to S.J. Bolton. I can see that I will now have to devour her three other novels!