The Wayward Girls

With echoes of The Enfield Haunting, a sustained sense of unease permeates this evocative novel, which holds a very unsettling power indeed * Heat magazine *
A chilling debut * Daily Express *
Wonderfully creepy debut ... Cleverly plotted and keeping the reader on the edge of the seat until the end of with a supremely satisfying denouement * I newspaper *
Set on the Yorkshire moors, one of the blasted motherlands of gothic fiction, The Wayward Girls moves between 1976 and the present day to spool out the story of a haunting . . .The novel is very much in conversation with the stories, both real and fictional, that have come before it . . .What sets The Wayward Girls apart is its finesse. With a touch so light that it appears accidental at first, Mason arranges things in pairs. Two girls look alike; one character is called Loo, and another Lew; there are two sets of researchers, and two haunted houses - one occupied by a young family, the other a care home. Before long, these pairs start to feel like the flickering of two images pasted together on a film reel. Even the prose has a celluloid quality; the point of view switches mid-paragraph so suddenly that it can be hard to follow, as though the film on the projector has slipped. Brilliantly, all of that is a clue. An engrossing response to paranormal films and gothic fiction, The Wayward Girls is a nearly perfect ghost story * Guardian *
The Wayward Girls is a wonderful debut. Mason expertly weaves her own brand of gothic to explore the haunting secrets of two sisters. Gripping, compelling and beautifully accomplished. * Jess Kidd, author of Himself and Things In Jars *