Starve Acre

Previously released in the UK and currently being adapted into a movie, the latest from Hurley (Devil’s Day) offers readers a slice of folk horror salted in grief. Richard and Juliette Willoughby move to Starve Acre, a bucolic hideaway in remote North Yorkshire, to have a quiet life with their son Ewan, who tragically dies there. After Ewan’s death, Richard immerses himself in work, and Juliette is distraught, until she is visited by a group of occultists called the Beacons. While the Beacons seem to help Juliette, they also unearth sinister secrets about what happened to Ewan and what lurks in the fields and forests. Hurley’s work brings to mind British folk horror movies of the 1970s, where the terror isn’t necessarily in the house but under the earth and demanding a sacrifice. However, the real root of this book’s power is the parents’ gnawing grief, which essentially blinds them to the horror that gradually reveals itself to the reader.