Books 2015 - Readers in Peril Challenge 2 - Bedlam by Ally Kennan

Everyone says the old asylum is empty. The grounds are overgrown, the wards are deserted and the building is slowly crumbling to the ground. But Lexi is sure someone is there. Dogs are disappearing from the village. There's an unsettling howling in the night. And Lexi has a feeling... A feeling that someone is watching her.

I went out looking for RIP books last weekend, and despite going to two different bookshops (okay, they were both Waterstones, but the second one was a bigger version *g*), nothing really grabbed me. I don't want anything too horror-ish, or too spooky, and I was in the mood for something set in Victorian times, but couldn't see much that wasn't a later book in a series (has anyone read any of the Bryant and May books?), and... and so this was one of three books I took home. (See that? I can find no books that I want to buy, and still buy three... natural talent, that.)

I was a little dubious about the wisdom of Bedlam, because look at that cover! Screaming and mental asylums, and... and there I didn't want anything too horror-y. But it turned out to be not quite what I was expecting... It's actually a Young Adult book, for a start. That wasn't where I found it in the bookshop, and the blurb on the previous edition is different - it starts When 16-year-old Lexi is forced to move in with her estranged mother.... Instead I was told by The Guardian that it was a "Nail-chewing thriller". It's kind of a combination of both those things...

( It starts... )

Peril the First: Read four books, any length, that you feel fit (the very broad definitions) of R.I.P. literature. It could be King or Conan Doyle, Penny or Poe, Chandler or Collins, Lovecraft or Leroux… or anyone in between.
1. Night of the Living Deed by E.J. Copperman
2. Bedlam by Ally Kennan