Review: Hex House by Amy Jane Stewart

Rating: 9/10

ELLY

Elly is running. Pregnant and still in her wedding dress, she flees the cottage that her new husband has rented for their wedding night. Because he’s not what people think he is – and she knows that, one day, he’ll hurt her in a way she can’t fix. Freezing and lost in the dead of night, Elly begins to lose hope.

A woman in the woods alone is never the beginning of the story. It’s usually the end.

So, when a beautiful house appears out of nowhere and a woman beckons her inside, it almost feels too good to be true.

Welcome to Hex House: a refuge, a home, a sanctuary. A place that can only be found by those who truly need it; a place that promises to teach Elly how to access a power more incredible – and more terrifying – than anything she could have imagined.

SIOBHAN

Four years after Siobhan meets Elly at Hex House, her life is in ruins. Once a promising filmmaker invited to the house to make a documentary with her brother, Theo, she’s given up on her dream after witnessing unspeakable horrors there. Now, she spends her time drinking too much, toying with an older man in increasingly dangerous ways, and trying to get Theo to speak to her again. She ignores the scar on her stomach that never fully heals.

That is, until someone reaches out with news about Hex House that could change everything.

And Siobhan knows, deep down, that she was always destined to return.

A dark fairytale with peat under its fingernails, Amy Jane Stewart’s debut novel “Hex House,” is an unputdownable folk horror that finds terror within sanctuary. Warm and welcoming and wide-open doors until of course, it’s not, this is Catriona Ward’s “Nowhere Burning,” meets T. Kingfisher- a compelling blend of magical realism, Scottish folklore, feminine rage, and plenty of depravity. A gripping dual timeline novel, with tactical cliffhangers generously deployed- wicked nudges that goad you into just one more- it’s fair to say that “Hex House,” with its pacing, prose and magic, is a page-turner. You can find this one on bookshelves, should you need it, from April 28th from Titan Books, but do be careful.

We follow Elly who (sensibly) bolts from her husband of a couple of hours (seriously, if you want to hate a man, read this book) and finds herself in the woods in the middle of the night. It’s there that she finds Hex House, a safe place for women. It’s warm, there’s plenty of food to go around, good company with people who have gone through similar things, Haina’s one on one lessons are rather unconventional, a little scary, a little liberating, but overall? A blessing. The word must be spread about such a place, and as luck would have it, two documentarians are on their way to do exactly that. 

One of them is Siobhan, who four years after the fact, has yet to recover from what happened at Hex House. She ditches film-making and settles for a deliberately smaller, dimmer life, frequenting bars and working at the cinema- where she runs into Owen. He was once her professor, and is now infatuated with her. So starts a queasy dance of power and discomfort, with what she is demanding of Owen becoming increasingly unsettling.

This is a fiercely feminist story, rage is built and allowed to darken, ferment, and then expressed in a unique and transgressive way that I won’t spoil for you. The questions of why this anger must be taught, tamed and swallowed to begin with and what happens when it’s unleashed are at the beating heart of the novel.

I also think this book has a lot to say about how we are often defined by our trauma, our experiences- it’s about identity and responsibility and reputation. We look to Siobhan, whose life has been thoroughly upended by the events we read about from Elly’s POV. What happened at Hex House caused her to sacrifice the career she used to want so badly, estranged her from her brother Theo, and is largely to blame for the general, downhill direction that her life has gone in. But then we consider her own part in the person that she has become, her ethically dubious choices in wake of her trauma. She is a gloriously frustrating character with sharp edges and major issues, who we want to root for nontheless. We look to Owen, who is being self-serving and predatory by entering into this strange relationship with a former student, whilst being anxious about his professional reputation, for such a thing would destroy his image. Stewart’s cast of characters refuse moral binaries, with victimhood and culpability often presented as separate- we are the sum, yes of what has happened to us, but inexorably what we choose to do next. It reads honestly.

A witchy, enchanting read that charmed me completely, “Hex House,” is such a stellar debut from an author living in my neck of the woods. I cannot wait to read more. Horrifying and magical in equal measure, you will devour this novel, and it might just devour you back.