Apartment 16 – by Adam Nevill

Apartment 16 in the posh London Barrington House has been vacant for over 50 years, but the sounds from within suggest otherwise. When Apryl inherits her late, great aunt’s apartment in the same building, she begins to discover the truth about apartment 16, her aunt’s apparent descent into madness, and the terrible secret that the remaining residents have spent the last half a century hiding.

Whilst I didn’t enjoy Apartment 16 quite as much as Last Days, it was still a great haunted house story.

Adam Neville is all about atmosphere, and here it’s thick and stifling. He masterfully describes a slow descent into madness amongst decay and deterioration. His description paints such an ugly picture you can almost smell the stench. Whereas Last Days had many extremely creepy parts, Apartment 16 tends to be unsettling throughout. The lines between reality and hallucination blur into a slow burn of dread that finally builds to an unresolved climax that leaves you out in the cold.

That unresolved climax lets an otherwise enjoyable book down, but Adam Nevill is still a master of horror.