“The Hiding Place is terrific in every way.”—Lee Child From the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man comes an unputdownable psychological thriller about a man who returns home to settle old scores—and uncovers a secret darker than he could have imagined. Joe never wanted to come back to Arnhill. After the way things ended with his old gang—the betrayal, the suicide—and what happened when his sister … betrayal, the suicide—and what happened when his sister went missing, the last thing he wanted to do was return to his hometown. But Joe doesn’t have a choice, not after a chilling email surfaces in his inbox: I know what happened to your sister. It’s happening again . . .
Lying his way into a teaching job at his former high school is the easy part. Facing off with onetime friends who aren’t too happy to have him back in town—while avoiding the enemies he’s made in the years since—is tougher. But the hardest part of all will be returning to the abandoned mine where his life changed forever, and finally confronting the horrifying truth about Arnhill, his sister, and himself. Because for Joe, the worst moment of his life wasn’t the day his sister went missing.
It was the day she came back.
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Some writers have it, and some don’t. CJ Tudor has it big time — The Hiding Place is terrific in every way.
Deliciously creepy, impeccably plotted and laced with both wicked humor and genuine shocks, The Hiding Place is the kind of read-under-the-covers thriller you didn’t think people wrote anymore. Lucky for us, C.J. Tudor still does. An absolute corker of a book.
The Hiding Place by C.J. Tudor is her second novel. Joe is going back to where he was born, but does he really want to? No…not after what happened. Can he face his past, or will it consume him?
Tudor does it again! With her writing, solid characters, and her infusion of horror mixed with mystery, this story will keep you on the edge of your seat while quickly turning the pages. This is an excellent tale of fear, confusion, and self loathing. I highly recommend this story to anyone looking for an intense read.
This is the second book by C.J. Tudor. I loved her first book, The Chalk Man, and was hoping that her new book would be as good. I shouldn’t have worried about it because even though this book is very different, it was suspenseful and scary and a real page turner.
Joe Thorne moved back to the town he grew up in after promising himself that he would never return. He has two reasons for returning – he needs a job and there was a teaching job available and he needs to try to stop what is happening to children in the town. When Joe was young, his sister Annie disappeared for 2 days and then returned as a totally different child. Now he sees it happening again to other children in the town and he knows that he has to put a stop to it. Despite the enemies that Joe left in town he believes that there is evil in the town that must be stopped. The town tries to get Joe to leave and his enemies work against him at every turn. The ensuing story is creepy and spine-tingling and will keep the reader turning pages to the surprising end.
As with The Chalk Man, this author does a great job of character development. She created a main character who was very driven but very believable. Her descriptions of small town life in England are also a strong reason that this book was so fantastic.
This was a fantastic page-turner with a touch of horror. I found it well written and addictive and a fantastic book.
Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.
Well this one has taken me a bit of time to collect my thoughts. It is a quite a bit different from The Chalk Man, it has a much darker feel and mystical elements. I will also tell you that I will never look at a black beetle again without getting the shivers!
Once again there is a young man returning to the town he grew up in. Joe Thorne has a dual purpose to his return, he needs a job, teaching, and he will never get over what happened to his little sister Annie. Once all is revealed you will have a hard time getting her out of your head as well! He wants revenge and an ending to what seems to be “happening again” in this town.
Joe starts a job teaching English at the school in the small town of Arnhill in Nottinghamshire. He finds few people who are happy to see him back and one in particular who wants him gone in one way or another.
There is a shroud of mystery about the town since a mining accident in the 1940’s took the lives of 18 men in “the pit”. Joe revisits this site again, a place that his group of friends found another entrance to when they were teens. Something terrible and unexplainable happened there and Joe wants it sealed forever. “I walk slowly around, breathing deeply, trying to keep myself calm. This is just a cave. The dead cannot hurt us. Bones are just bones. Shadows are nothing but shadows. Except shadows are never just shadows, they are the deepest part of the darkness. And the deepest part of the darkness is where the monsters hide.”
This book was a slower start, I think I was into 50% before the book took off for me. But I know this author and was willing to wait. I’m glad that I did. C.J. Tudor excels at character development. I feel as though I really know Joe and some of his old high school friends, Chris, Stephen, Marie. There are some great twists in this book but they come more from the characters than the plot, but that’s a good thing. It seems easier to turn a plot one way or another than to help us understand how people can hide their inner selves.
I’m still ruminating about the ending, I have some questions that I’d really like answers to, but perhaps that is the author’s intent. I recommend this to anyone who loves intelligent, character driven mysteries, with some added “chill” factors.
I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through Edelweiss.
Dark, gothic and utterly compelling, The Hiding Place pulls off a rare combination — an atmosphere of unsettling evil along with richly nuanced characterisation.
I thank NetGalley and Penguin Random House UK (Claire Bush in particular) for providing me an ARC copy of this novel that I freely chose to review. I had read and enjoyed C. J. Tudor’s previous novel The Chalk Man (you can read my review here), and I was eager to see what she’d follow it with.
I know I can go on in my reviews, so I’ve decided to cut to the chase, in case you’re in a hurry. Did I enjoy the novel? Yes. C. J. Tudor can definitely write and write well. But, if you are looking for an original story and something that will take you by surprise, this is not the book for you. That is particularly true if you’re a fan of Stephen King, although there are elements in the story that will be familiar also to people who watch a lot of movies, even if they don’t read King’s novels or his adaptations to screen (a somewhat difficult feat, I must admit). I’m not saying there are no surprising elements in the book, and there are quite a few twists and turns in it, but the general plot lines I think will be recognisable to many, especially to people who read this genre often.
In many ways, this book has much in common with the author’s first novel. The main character, Joe Thorne, is also a teacher, and far from an exemplary one. It is not so much his teaching that is at fault, but his drinking, his gambling, his lying… Yes, this is a morally dubious main character, who also narrates the story in the first person, and who, although we might or might not suspect this, to begin with, also belongs in the category of the unreliable narrator. He seems to freely share negative things about himself from the very beginning, but as the story moves on we realise that what he tells us might not be the whole truth. I won’t elaborate more on this, because there is a twist close to the end that puts things under an interesting light. Like in his previous novel, the author is also forced to look at things that happened years back, which involved him and his friends at the time.
I kept wondering what I thought about Joe, and I’m not sure I’ve decided yet. He is intelligent, witty, but has a penchant for getting himself into trouble, and although his way of using sarcasm to protect himself makes him rather amusing, there are moments when we glimpse at other aspects of his personality. He was a devoted brother, he was bullied and later joined the bullies’ gang, and he suffered terrible loses as a teenager, although… He struggles between trying to avoid tragedy repeating itself and trying to keep himself out of trouble, as he is being tracked by Gloria, who is intent on getting him to pay off his gambling debts, one way or another (I confess Gloria is my favourite character in the novel. I’m not sure if that says more about me or the novel, but she is fast, small but lethal, and you underestimate her at your peril). Joe tells the story of what is happening now when he returns to the town where he was born to take up a teaching job, because somebody has anonymously warned him that some pretty terrible things that happened when he was a teen have started happening again.
This is a trip back in time, and the narration of Joe’s current investigation and life (including living in a cottage where a murder-suicide took place) is interspersed with his memories of what happened to the Annie Thorne of the title, his little sister, who disappeared, returned (sort of), and then died in an accident that killed their father as well. (By the way, and just in case you read it or see it in some place, it seems the book was originally going to be published in the US as The Hiding Place, and I have seen some reviews on Goodreads under that title). There are many other characters in the novel, some that we meet in the past and the present (Joe’s friends and schoolmates, some still around, school staff members…), and some that are brand new, like some of the teachers (Beth is another one of my favourites). Although not all of them have big parts, and some are drawn only in outline, the author is very skilled at creating a sense of community and a believable, if creepy, small town. This mining community, with its challenges and changes over the years, comes to life, and despite the supernatural touches suffusing the story, the setting remains, mostly, well-grounded and realistic.
As I said at the beginning, the story is not very original. In some way,s it is like a collage of disparate elements many readers will recognise: the prologue brought to my mind Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and some other aspects of the story did as well (although there are no aliens, just in case), some reviewers mentioned The Tommyknockers (I hadn’t thought about it, but yes, in a way the connection in theme is also there), like her previous novel, some bits of it made me think of It, although the Stephen King novel it resembles the most is one whose new film adaptation is due out later this year (and I won’t mention it in case people are not familiar with it. It’s one of the first novels by King I read, and the first novel I read in English in its entirety, so it’s not one I’ve ever forgotten). There’s even a passing nudge at The Usual Suspects. Postmodernism is fond of pastiche, but it is normally used to emphasise the fact that the surface of an object or a creation is everything, and we can mix and match diverse elements without feeling obliged to refer to their original meaning or intent. I am not sure if C. J. Tudor would call her novel a pastiche, and she does give the stories and the characters her personal touch, but I can see the point of a reviewer who called it “fan fiction”.
The novel, as it is (and if you’re not familiar with King’s books all I’ve mentioned might not affect you at all), is full of atmosphere, quirky characters, some pretty dark moments, some that might be scary (I don’t scare easy, so I’m perhaps not the best person to comment), and some set pieces and scenes that are compelling and are easy to imagine as a film or TV adaptation. As I said, there are plenty of twists and turns, and the book is highly entertaining. There are many reflections that would make readers chuckle, even though sometimes we might also feel like telling the character to stop being so clever and get on with things.
I thought I’d share a few quotes, to give you an idea of the writing style:
“Finally, a long time since I’ve seen anything resembling civilization, or even a McDonald’s, I pass a crooked and weathered sign on my left: Arnhill welcomes you. Underneath, some eloquent little shit has added: to get fucked.”
“It is the sort of village that glowers at you when you arrive and spits on the ground in disgust when you leave.”
Here, Joe is talking to Beth about the teacher whose cottage he’s living in now. Beth is telling him she is fed-up with people asking if they had seen the tragedy coming, if there were any signs.
“Julia came into the school wearing a great big placard around her neck: ‘I intend to kill my son and myself. Have a nice day.’
“Well, politeness costs nothing.” (Joe replies).
On a more philosophical note:
“People say time is a great healer. They’re wrong. Time is simply a great eraser.”
So, this is a good read for lovers of thrillers with a touch of the supernatural and horror, but I’d be a bit wary of recommending it to enthusiastic readers of the genre or of Stephen King who are looking for something unique. But if you enjoy well-written stories in the genre and have fun looking for references and connections to well-known books and films, you will have a blast with this one.
This is a real page turner! There is a lot going on and it all begins in the old mining town of Arnhill! This is C.J. Tudor’s second novel and it offers the reader a look at a towns dark secrets that are closely tied to an old coal mine!
I enjoyed the way the story jumped back and forth from 1992 to the present. You get to read about what happened to the characters in 1992 and how this shaped their lives as adults. The mine hides a terrible history and we learn what this is about three-fourths of the way into the book.
I did get a few feelings that this is strangely similar to a King book I’ve read and love(Pet Semetary) but the author makes it her own by her great storytelling and characters. She delivers a story full of twists, puzzles, surprises and I couldn’t put it down. It was an easy read and entertaining.
The Taking of Annie Thorne (The Hiding Place) was such an engaging read.
I went into this blind, not quite knowing what to expect and can honestly say this really impressed me.
From that visually disturbing opening scene where we along with the officers are exposed to that stomach-churning optical delight: that set the stage so brilliantly in preparation for whatever was to come forth.
This really was powerful stuff projecting such an atmosphere of darkness and a stench of foreboding evil that Our main character, teacher Joe Thorn had felt once many tears before.
So this is told from teacher Joe’s POV: a washed-up forty-year-old with a gambling addiction, bad debts and a sarcastic take no prisoners wit.
I found myself really warming to Joe despite his many faults at heart he seemed a good man who had just lost his way a bit: his witty one-liners also made me smile and he just came across as real.
Many years ago Joe’s Sister Annie had vanished from her bed in the middle of the night only to return 48 hours later alive but changed in subtle ways.
Joe has had an email from an anonymous source claiming it is all happening again.
Needing someone to lie low Joe decides to kill two birds with one stone and off he trots back to the backwater place he grew up in to delve deeper.
So this was creepy and cold and had a deep sense of wrongness resounding from the pages almost from the start here.
That macabre Abbie Eyes Doll and the insects adding such a harbinger of doom atmosphere to the whole entire concern.
This really wasn’t about any shock scares more an intense awareness of things to come that sinks down deep into your very bones, petrifying them in the process.
Past does collide with present here as Joe’s life starts to gradually implode and what hes running from manages to catch up with him.
This really was such great reading: a real ominous page-turner that I really did enjoy and that curveball right at the finish here well that certainly was a surprise: didn’t see that one coming, nice finish, no issue recommending this one at all.
I voluntary reviewed a copy of The Taking of Annie Thorne
All opinions expressed are entirely my own.
Reviewed By Beckie Bookworm
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/9460945-bex-beckie-bookworm
https://www.facebook.com/beckiebookworm/
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Joe Thorne returns to his hometown of Arnhill to teach high school English in his former high school where he was bullied before joining the head bully’s gang and bullying other students. This school seems to have a bullying problem and the head bully now is Joe’s former bully’s son. Sound confusing?? There are a lot of plots and subplots going on as well as a lot of characters, which does make this book a little confusing at times, but everything gets tied in very nicely in the end. I thought this was going to be a thriller but then it turned into a supernatural and then finally into more of a horror story. I don’t usually read supernatural or horror stories (except for Stephen King occasionally) but I was really drawn to this book from the very beginning and I did really enjoy it. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this very dark and creepy read which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Favorite Quotes:
Gloria might look like a delicate china doll. But the only doll she has anything in common with is Chucky.
Simon is a bloody awful teacher, but one thing he excels at is getting under other people’s skin. If you have an Achilles’ heel, he’ll find it and nip at it like a starving terrier.
We’re all still children inside. The same fears, the same joys. We just get taller, and better at hiding things.
There are no such things as white lies. Lies are never black or white. Only gray. A fog obscuring the truth. Sometimes so thick we can barely see it ourselves.
… something changed in her, that night, when we went down there. Maybe something changed in all of us. Maybe guilt and regret weren’t the only things we brought back.
My Review:
The Hiding Place was ingeniously crafted, wickedly paced, and brilliantly executed. I cannot recall the last time I was so raptly attentive or willingly read anything so creepily mesmerizing. I tumbled right into this complex and twisted tale of deceit, regrets, and dark humor. It was chillingly realistic. I was taut with tension, hair sticking straight up, shoulders in my ears, and chewing my fingers; yet I didn’t dare put my Kindle down for fear of what would happen to the character next if I abandoned him to his own devices. The storylines were cleverly contrived and the writing was whip-smart and loaded with clever snark while it beckoned unremittingly with ruthless intrigue and cunning misdirections.
I was right there beside the irreverently flippant and rabidly waspish Joe the entire time – sometimes I was on his shoulder, other times I was behind his eyes and rattling around in his cranium. Ms. Tudor’s sharply honed words kept me present, fully tethered, and constantly on edge. I smelled the vile dankness of evil, heard the skittering of the hoards of insects, and felt his deep desperation and loathing as well as more than a few icy prickles of fear and anxiety. I was so fully engaged I even experienced a sense of claustrophobia while he was crawling through the dark tunnels.
After reading The Chalk Man, I postulated the hypothesis of C.J. Tudor being an evil genius; a theory she has more than proven. Luckily for us, in addition to her gifted intellect she also possesses exceptionally strong word voodoo, and I for one, cannot get enough of it.
See my review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2514942961
I didn’t like this one nearly as much as I had hoped I would but I did like it. I absolutely loved C.J. Tudor’s first book, The Chalk Man, so I was really eager to read her newest book. This was not a bad book by any means but for me, it was missing that essential spark that I had hoped to find.
This is really Joe’s story. Joe goes back to teach at his hometown high school. This town doesn’t hold the best memories for him but he needs a job and there is one available at his old high school so he does what he needs to do. It is obvious right from the start that Joe knows how to work a situation and can fake it when needed. Joe has a few, okay more than a few, gambling debts so he is in desperate need of a job.
As a reader, you know that Joe has some history in this town, including whatever happened to his sister, Annie, but it takes a long time to find out exactly what happened. This book is told both in the present day and the past. I felt like a lot more of the book was set in the present day but I liked the story from the past a lot more. As the story came together and things were revealed, I just never felt all that surprised. I wanted something in this story to really shake things up but it seemed somewhat predictable for me.
I had a hard time connecting to Joe and really all of the characters in this book. I never felt like Joe could be trusted and he really just felt like a mess to me. I really have no problem liking flawed characters and often feel that they feel more realistic but Joe just seemed to be missing that redeeming quality that I needed to see. All of the characters in this book felt rather flat to me.
I think that a lot of readers will like this one a lot more than I did. I was looking forward to a dark story which I got but unfortunately, I couldn’t connect with the characters and felt that the story was somewhat predictable. I did like the book and plan to read more from C.J. Tudor just as soon as it is available.
I received a digital review copy of this book from Crown Publishing Group via NetGalley.
I spent most of this book trying to figure out what happened to Annie. Was this a supernatural story or not? Sadly I struggled with this book and it didn’t hold my attention until about the last 3rd of the book.
So a group of 5 teenagers find their way into a cave in a mine and something happens there. 25 years later, 1 of the 5 returns. Apparently whatever happened then is happening again. That’s pretty much the way this story goes. It wasn’t poorly written, I just had too many questions as I was reading that weren’t answered at the time. I was really having a hard time figuring out what was going on.
Parts of the story that didn’t go anywhere.
Another wonderful book by C.J. Tudor!
Scary and jarring, this is one of the best books I’ve read all year.
I really enjoyed Chalk Man by CJ Tudor and was expecting the same level of excitement and intensity from this story. While this story kept me curious, I felt it was a bit slower than the previous novel. This novel isn’t connected to Chalk Man, but is similar in style. I felt the writing had a very similar taste to a Stephen King novel which was very exciting. There was a creepiness factor which kept me intrigued and flipping the pages. I felt like the ending was strong and a bit unexpected, with a few twists I enjoyed and the reason I rated 4 stars over 3 stars! If you enjoy a creepy horror type story, this is a book for you!
CJ Tudor did it again. I think this book is more thrilling, twisted and intriguing than The Chalk Man. Loved the characters in this one. Joe is pathetic but like Gloria, I like him. Must be my history with addiction that I can see me in him.
There is a supernatural element in the book but it was subtle. Good writing. Good plot. I always enjoy books where people return to their hometown to finish some business only to be told to go away.
Very good book.
C.J. Tudor knows how to tell a story that gets under your skin, one that you can’t let go. What amazes me, as a writer, is her amazing voice: rich, deep, authentic, engaging. If you like Tana French, you will love C.J. Tudor. There are different titles for the book, US vs UK, so if you can’t find it as The Hiding Place, look for it under The Taking of Annie Thorne