After the funeral for one the Savages, the two families reunite and visit this lovely place; a place where they seem to repress the unpleasant events that happened there, like that time the hired help's daughter drowned there, or the time one of them visited the third house… the house that seems to be filling with sand. I originally gave this 4 stars, but after thinking about it overnight, I cannot think of one thing that the author could have done better.

This book just pulls at your heart strings and really causes you to stay up into the n ight just to read it.The spirits in the third house can take on any form and are described as scarecrows of skin and cloth stuffed with sand. After laying to rest the beloved former matriarch of the family, Marian Savage, the family heads to the Gulf coast of Alabama and the beloved family retreat of Beldame as a way of dealing and coming to terms with the grief. Below is my best attempt to interpret the book, but I would also very much like to hear your thoughts as well.

Find out in The Blood of the Hydra, and join the Elementals on their mission to save the world – or die trying.Control comes in the form of the monstrous, from Marian Savage and Lawton McCray, Big Barbara’s bullying husband, to the entity that inhabits Beldame and wants it for itself. The Savages’ house is inexplicably destroyed by sand, which appears to come from nowhere and consumes the mansion. This is one story that I can see re-reading every few years, just to bring back that sense of utter foreboding that I got from it. Ben’s one of my favourite booktubers, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get my hands on a free book, especially when it’s at his recommendation, you can’t go wrong!

I spent my childhood summers on the Gulf Coast and the memory of those thick lazy days is powerful stuff.The Savages and McCrays being the perfect example of a dysfunctional family and they feel very alive, each with their own unique quirks and habits. A similarly disturbing tension between dull reality and the supernatural is produced in The Elementals, wherein a host of visitors come to stay at a secluded house occupied by embodiments of elemental forces. McDowell's 1981 novel The Elementals featured prominently on a number of lists amongst the greatest horrors of all time.