And as for John, well! He’s a controlling, domineering bully towards his sister and she just takes it. I guess, most of all, I felt sorry for her. I did grow to feel a strange fondness for Marion. She has no real friends, she is dominated by her older brother, painfully naive in her approach to life and the product of a formal and loveless upbringing. We see life from Marion’s perspective and if I’m honest, I really began to feel for her. The reader is made immediately aware that there is something not quite ‘normal’ going on here. Maybe even ‘peculiar’ (maybe all three!). The best word to describe the siblings is probably ‘odd’, or ‘strange’. We meet middle-aged Marion and John Zetland, brother and sister who live together in their family home. You can purchase a copy of The Visitors by clicking HERE. But maybe that’s just me! Before I mosey on with my review I would like to wish Catherine Burns and the team at Legend Press a very happy publication day. I like to read dark fiction ALL OF THE TIME. And who doesn’t like the odd dark read now and again…? Well me, actually. Everything about Catherine Burns’s debut novel appealed to me. This is one of those books where I saw the cover, read the blurb and knew I HAD to read it. Until, suddenly, John has a heart attack and Marion is forced to go down to the cellar herself and face the gruesome truth that her brother has kept hidden.Īs questions are asked and secrets unravel, maybe John isn’t the only one with a dark side.”

A timid spinster in her fifties who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to shut out the shocking secret that John keeps in the cellar. “Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother, John in a decaying Georgian townhouse on the edge of a northern seaside resort.

The Visitors by Catherine Burns