Description

“The symmetry should have tipped me off.”

After a violent incident at work, Tamsin goes looking for a fresh start in a remote cottage far away from her old life. Here she could make real friends, find a job she loves, become a whole new person, even.

But the solitary cottage is actually a semi-detached, with only a thin wall separating her from a total stranger. Her neighbour is an enigma. Dowdy one moment, vivacious the next, but always wearing an unnerving smile. Tamsin can’t shake the feeling that there’s something wrong with her, especially when she starts experiencing disturbances in her own home.

As the locals share strange stories about her house, and her barely contained paranoia spirals out of control, Tamsin begins to suspect that the past she was so desperate to escape might never let her go.

Publisher Review

"Masterful... a wild spiral of madness and magic, and the brutal truth of our darkest shadows." -Megan Bontrager, author of The Sea Hides Its Dead "Just as each person can hold multitudes, Home Sick manages to be both creepy and comforting, dark and delightful, sweet and strange. It is beyond a shadow of a doubt one of the best horror books you can pick up in 2026 and beyond." -Johanna van Veen, author of Blood On Her Tongue "Home Sick is psychological horror with a brilliant folkloric twist. Layered with menace and dark liminality, this exciting debut compellingly explores self-destructive anger and the hard road of coming home to yourself." -Lorraine Wilson, author of We Are All Ghosts in the Forest "A love letter to female rage with a thrilling subscript of dark folklore, Home Sick is about the unhomely which inhabits us all." -Ally Wilkes, author of All the White Spaces "Home Sick is so beautifully and immersively written that you can almost miss the sharp edges, until they've snuck right up and pierced you. Vivid and real, almost desperately relatable, and incredibly cathartic, this is a book I already know I will read again and again, and find more and more to it every time." -C.J. Dotson, author of These Familiar Walls "Home Sick is a liminal fever dream of a novel exploring isolation, anger, and what it means to find - and fight for - a home. Folkloric and warped, it throws us into a claustrophobic domestic horror of the nastiest order with an unreliable narrator you can't help but root for." -MK Hardy, author of The Needfire "Rhiannon Grist shows what an award-winning novella writer can do with the breathing space a novel offers. Deeply creepy and gorgeously compelling, this folk gothic horror will keep you up at night; I'll be thinking about Home Sick for a long time to come." -Charlotte Cross, author of The Brides "Compelling and chilling." -Anya Bergman, author of The Witches of Vardo "A chilling and gripping novel for readers who appreciate folk horror in everyday lives." -Aurealis "A debut that understands female rage not as empowerment but as wreckage." -Ginger Nuts of Horror "Darkly funny and viciously human, Home Sick turns shame and loneliness into a house you'll never want to leave." -Daphne Fama author of House of Monstrous Women