PotsandPlots

Alex Lane is an orphan. When the summer term finishes, he has nowhere to go. No opportunities. No job. Until something turns up at the university. A last-minute clearance job at a newly purchased property, aiming to be turned into a hall of residence.

Good money, free accommodation and a small group of student colleagues. What could go wrong?

Just about everything.

Growing Information:

Plant With: Students, Psychedelics, The Occult.

Grows Into: A tale of a student summer job that descends literally into madness.

Rating: Vibrant Annual 🌻🌻(Check here for rating information.)

Available now in hardback (affiliate link).

The Review:

Things are not as they seem in Solace House. After some initial clearance on a satellite building, the team are moved to the main mansion, the titular Solace House. A classic gothic property, owned by a deceased millionaire with a hoarder complex.

Every room is filled with junk, but as the students start to take it out, layer by layer, the mysteries of the house deepen and deepen.

I very much enjoyed my time reading Solace House. It’s a hefty 500 pages, but it never outstays its welcome. Will Maclean’s prose zips along, and the cast of characters he’s created is both intriguing and engaging. The dialogue between them is snappy, relatable and realistic.

The fun of Solace House is trying to work out just exactly what is going on. Maclean layers his story with teases and hints at what’s going to happen. There’s a lot of foreshadowing here. I derived great joy trying to spot and decipher the breadcrumbs left by the author (who knew you could have coded breadcrumbs?) One such hint relied heavily on one of my favourite Queen songs, which had me questioning myself early on in the novel.

I am perhaps predisposed to enjoying Solace House. It is set during the early 90s, my own student days, and is wonderfully reminiscent of those heady summer holidays, where life had infinite possibilities. I listened to a lot of Queen back then, and lived in a tired old house at the back of a hall of residence, so I could almost see, feel and hear Alex, Adam, Ella and the rest, as they went about their work.

As the students peel back the rubbish of Solace House, they start to uncover the occult obsession of the mansion’s owner. This leads to hidden shrines and ritual explorations, and no small amount of magic mushrooms.

As the mystery deepens, cracks appear in the relationships between the students. They start to find themselves alone in the house where their perceptions are twisted. They can no longer rely on each other to tell the truth. As the sense of weirdness ramps up, the itch to find out what was happening almost became unbearable, and I was compelled to read into the night.

If Solace House has a flaw, it is that Maclean’s set-up was almost too good. With only about a quarter of the novel left, I was fully invested, desperate to know the truth behind the mysteries of Solace House, and whether Alex would escape unscathed (or more, how scathed he would turn out to be).

The problem with novels like this is that before resolution, you have infinite possibilities. After resolution, these have collapsed down to one. It’s almost impossible for the author to fulfil satisfactorily the myriad pathways mapped out in the reader’s head.

Well, this reader anyway. I found myself slightly frustrated by the novel’s denouement. I’m not even sure if Maclean could have made it satisfactory, such was the elaborate collage he had created. Of course, your mileage may vary. You may love his finale. The only way to know would be to read the book for yourself.

And I do recommend that you do. Especially if you are a 50-something-year-old who went to university in the 90s. The story is a paean to those halcyon days, and a whole lot more besides. Despite my disquiet at the novel’s ending Solace House is an excellent meandering mystery. The puzzles contained within its pages, combined with its strong characterisation, make it a captivating read.