When Samantha Payne’s grandfather dies, she figures she won’t even get a mention in the will. After all, she hasn’t seen him in fourteen years, not since her father took his own life after being accused of murdering a child at their lakefront cottage. Her grandfather always insisted her father was innocent, despite Sam having caught him burying the child’s body, his clothing streaked with blood.

But when she does attend the reading of the will at the behest of her aunt, she discovers that her grandfather left her the very valuable lakefront property where the family cottage sits. There’s one catch: Sam needs to stay in the cottage for a month. To finally face the fact she was wrong and her father was innocent, in her grandfather’s words.

Traveling to Paynes Hollow, Sam is faced with the realities of her childhood and the secrets kept hidden in the shadows of her memories. When her aunt goes missing a couple days into their stay, Sam begins to question everything again. Plagued by nightmares and paranoia, she begins hearing sounds in the forest and seeing shapes crawling from the water as the rippling waves of the lake promise something unspeakably dark lurking just below their surface.

This book contains mentions of suicide.

There are many things that people would do for a million dollars, but spending the night in the family home where you watched your father bury a child’s body? Not on the top of my list, and definitely not on the top of the list for the protagonist of this unique, eerie thriller, either.

At the start of the story, we meet Samantha. Her grandfather has recently passed away, bequeathing her the entirety of his sprawling lakefront estate in his will—if she can manage to stay there for an entire month. As Sam returns to Paynes Hollow, the town where whispered secrets seem to hang in the air heavier than fog, she’s forced to confront the nightmarish memories that chased her away years ago. While Sam and Ben, the young estate caretaker who is less than pleased to see Sam, butt heads on the land, they begin to notice strange events happening. And as people begin mysteriously disappearing, Sam realizes her childhood estate is just as dark, if not darker, than she remembered.

The Haunting of Paynes Hollow is a chilling, slow-burn thriller that blends a gothic atmosphere with a mythological twist. It’s about family guilt, twisted legacies, and what it means to dig up the past—literally. Perfect for fans of spooky season, this is the kind of story that keeps you up at night wondering what’s really lurking in the woods just beyond the porch light.