ARC REVIEW Stillwell by Michael Phillip Cash

I love a good ghost story, but it is probably one of the genres I am most picky over. I cut my adult fiction with Dean Koontz and later Clive Barker. I also love ghost story movies but like books I am very picky about this genre. Stillwell had a great start, regrettably it didn't end the same. When it came to the end it encited the same reaction out of me as the movie Insidious; "That's how you want to end it?" kind of reaction. It wasn't a bad ending it was a twist from the norm and it just disappointed me in a anti-climatic sort of way and yet still parts were very predictable.

Paul Russo just buried his wife after an agonizing battle with cancer; now he is left with three kids to raise by himself. He is also trying to get back on his game at work, being a realtor can be a real cut throat business and if you don't move quickly you get left in the dust. Desperate for a sale he accepts the house of an old friend's parents, Stillwell Manor. The house was the scene of a murder suicide and that will make it a very hard sale but Paul is determined to sell it.

His personal life is a little harder to figure out, his two oldest, the twins, are dealing with the tragedy differently while his youngest says she can see her mother's ghost in the house. Things eventually start to work out with the help of his sister and parents. But Paul despite getting the hang of being a single parent isn't sleeping, his dreams are plagued with visions of a monkey-esk demon tormenting his wife's spirit. He is drawn toward Stillwell manor and the gruesome murder and the old well on site.

Overall, it was disappointing, I was really liking it and the ending just ruined the whole thing. But the side story of the ghost haunting Stillwell Manor was fantastic full of lots of history and misadventures of love and finding peace.