The View from Here

I’ll admit, I side-eyed the premise at first: *Another* widow convinced her dead husband is messing with her? But Hall subverts the trope by making the real horror not the *possibility* of a living ghost, but the way grief warps perception. The protagonist’s spiral is so viscerally rendered that when she starts finding ‘clues’—a moved photo, a familiar cologne—I caught myself pausing the audiobook to double-check my own surroundings. That’s how effectively Hall plays with dread. The narration is a double-edged sword. The performer’s hushed, intimate delivery works wonders for the quieter moments (like the chilling scene where the protagonist ‘hears’ her husband’s voice in a crowded room), but some of the more frantic passages feel undercooked—like the narrator is holding back when the text demands a scream. The pacing drags slightly in the middle, as the protagonist’s repetition of ‘I’m not crazy’ starts to feel like filler rather than character development. Still, the final act’s twist—less about *who* is gaslighting her and more about *why*—lands with gut-punch precision. If you love thrillers that weaponize psychological ambiguity (think *The Last Mrs. Parrish* meets *Get Out*’s social horror), this will burrow under your skin. Just don’t listen to it alone at night.