Reviews - Wylding Hall | The StoryGraph

905 reviews for:

Wylding Hall

Elizabeth Hand

3.74 AVERAGE

theliteraryhooker's review against another edition

5.0

dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

It's as if Elizabeth Hand wrote this with precisely my tastes in mind. I adored, ADOOOORED this book!!! Creepy old manor? Check. All the gothic vibes you could possibly want? Check. Following a band looking for inspiration? Check. Told in a non-traditional format? Check.

I loved the ambiguity, the slight unreliability of our narrators, the lush writing. I could keep going but suffice to say I loved this book entirely and it found me at precisely the right moment where it was exactly 100% what I wanted. LOVED IT!

Content Warnings

bumblebusra's review against another edition

3.0

no because i knew something bad had happened there yet my first thought was 'hmmm, what a life... i want to stay at wylding hall for the summer'

sibilant_fricative's review against another edition

3.5

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

acrisalves's review against another edition

4.0

I have read this book some weeks ago, but it is not an easy review. Wylding Hall is a strong and vivid reading – one that, in the end, left me unsettled. Along the story I kept remembering the classic Little, Big from John Crowley, and how a big, ancient and layer built house can be the stage to a mesmerizing story.
The tale revolves around a folk band with some famous hits in the 70s and their last album, Wylding Hall that never got to be recorded in a studio and was released with the recordings from the rehearsals.
After an unfortunate accident with a member of the group, the manager rents an old house in the middle of the country and gets the band back to work. But the neverending house has some secrets of her own, and the lead singer, Julian, willingly explores them in his mysterious way.
In the end Julian disappears, leaving beyond an awesome record but no clues about what has happened. Several years latter someone undigs the story, and collects several reports, from everyone around the story, in order to rebuild the disappearance. What really happened is unclear and one can only wonder…

raemelle's review against another edition

3.0

I did not love this book. It started out okay, but it was ultimately too slow and a bit too gothic for me. It takes the form of people being interviewed for some sort of documentary, and the characters are describing events which mostly occurred in the 1970s. The theme is folk music, which is also not an especially interesting topic for me. Nothing technically wrong with the book. I listened to the audiobook version, so it's hard to say if I would have liked it more reading it. (I did not like the accent or inflections of person who voiced the American character. It sounded American, but was just a bit slow, annoying and, I don't know, hippy-ish to me. Probably appropriate for the character, but honestly just annoying to me). It also takes way too long for anything of interest to happen. Just descriptions of everyone arriving at this manor house, some kind of weird incidents, but nothing really scary. Just kind of a creepy vibe, I guess. The end was vague. Still don't really understand what happened. I feel like I'm expected to do my own research on the part of the birds and the folklore surrounding that, which is annoying because I have enough of my own homework to do, thank you. Might make for a better movie, if done right. But not my thing as a book.