The Cabin on Souder Hill by Lonnie Busch – A Review

It’s been ages since I’ve done a Netgalley review guys but I’m so excited to bring you this one. The Cabin on Souder Hill intrigued me when I was doing my usual hunt on Netgalley and I knew that I wanted to read it. As you all should know by now, covers are my kryptonite and can single handedly cause me to pick a book even when I have no idea what the story itself is about. The cover for this book is awesome and the plot is intriguing so let’s dive in to the spoiler free review.

Michelle and Cliff Stage bought their isolated vacation cabin in the mountains of North Carolina with hopes of repairing their eighteen-year marriage. But when Cliff disappears one night searching for the source of a mysterious light in the woods, Michelle’s life will change in unimaginable ways. After the sheriff’s department fails to find him, Michelle scrambles down the same dark mountainside alone, the strange, beckoning light her only guide.

What she discovers is a cabin, identical to theirs, housing a life she barely recognizes–and a husband she hardly knows. Cliff is a changed man. Now caring and considerate, no longer a manipulative womanizer, he is also missing a finger. He claims that Cassie, their teenage daughter, is dead, killed in a car accident over a year ago. Michelle knows that’s not possible–Cassie had phoned her from Atlanta only hours before. Even when shown Cassie’s grave, Michelle refuses to accept she’s gone.

Michelle wants her daughter and her life back, and the only clue to what has happened is a man named Pink. A real estate agent and the man who years earlier built Michelle and Cliff’s cabin, Pink was rumored to have killed his wife and buried her on the property then vanished never to be seen again. But in Michelle’s new reality, Pink and his wife still reside in town and Pink’s smile-splashed billboards are everywhere. To get back to the world where her daughter exists, Michelle must unravel the mystery of Pink while questioning her very reality–and her sanity. Haunting, atmospheric, and deeply thought-provoking, The Cabin on Souder Hill questions the very nature of our existence and the choices we make to form it.

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I received this book in exchange for an honest review. I will keep this review short as the book is not due to release for several months and after release I will post a more detailed spoiler review.

This book was…difficult. Not because it was bad, it was far from that but because it was complicated. There was a lot going on, the characters, the plot, the mystery, the resolution, the end. It had a lot of threads going in many different directions and I enjoyed the ride in trying to figure it all out.

The main character was someone that I connected with, I wanted to see her through her journey. I wanted her to find happiness and to figure everything out. One character that stood out for me though was Pink. He comes off as a creep but he’s got a lot of layers and by the end I found myself rooting for him to find happiness too because damn it, he needed it.

The pacing worked well, things didn’t get boring or go by too fast. I liked the elements that caused everything that happened to happen, I can’t get into them here but it seemed like the author did his research and I can appreciate that. It’s difficult with this kind of book to have it all make sense in the end using the mechanism that he did and I think he did a pretty good job.

I wasn’t particularly happy with the ending though. I did like that it ended in a way that made me wonder what was going to happen next, but it felt like the ending rushed to fit all the explanations in and then it was over. I wouldn’t say that that means that the book is bad, not at all. In fact I think that while I didn’t like the ending that was more because I wanted things to be explained in more detail. I wanted more. I didn’t want it to end and I wanted it to be…messier.

I liked this book however and I would recommend it if you like this genre. It’s available for pre-order right now on Amazon and if you feel so inclined, please consider using my affiliate link to pre-order. It doesn’t cost extra for you but it does support the blog and I would greatly appreciate it.