Book Review: Home Sick by Rhiannon Grist
Genre: Horror Thriller
Age: Adult
Format: ebook
Looking for a fresh start, Tamsin flees to the Scottish countryside, hoping the cottage she purchases unseen will give her space and a chance to reinvent herself. When she arrives, however, she discovers her cottage is a semi-detached, one home split into two with only a thin wall. Tamsin does her best, but can’t shake the feeling there’s something strange with her neighbour. Not that the locals seem to mind, though they’re not exactly the friendly countryfolk Tamsin imagined, either. As Tamsin grows further and further from her dream of a fresh start, she is plagued with strange happenings and a neighbour she can’t quite make heads nor tail of.
I loved this one. Honestly, there is so much I want to say about it and I don’t think I’ll really do it justice or be able to put it all into words. This book definitely deserves to be on top horror of 2026 lists and it’s only August!
Let’s start with Tamsin. Tamsin is incredibly unlikable. She’s self-centred, paranoid, and judgemental. I’ve been frustrated recently with characters that are either unintentionally unlikable, or unlikable without being compelling. Tamsin doesn’t have those issues. She is, instead, incredibly compelling. She’s also very realistic, and I think there’s a combination here of recognising in her people we’ve perhaps known, mixed with a reflection of what we go through during our worst days. She’s convinced that wherever she goes people are looking at her and judging her and dislike her, when the reality is, as with most things, people aren’t paying that much attention. She convinces herself people are ‘out to get her’, and it means she puts barriers up, struggles to take a joke or even defend herself. Tamsin is constantly waiting for the worst. She flees to the countryside because of a violent incident in work (which we have to wait for an explanation for, but when it comes it’s incredible), and she creates these ideals in her head of what the countryside and countryfolk will be like. She expects everyone to be super welcoming and friendly, and the village to be made up of farmers and outdoorsy types. Instead, she gets, well, a village with a mixed bag of locals, most of whom have seen too many ‘outsiders’ come and go to really care about Tamsin at the start.
There are people who try to help her, but a big part of this book is Tamsin overcoming her flaws not only to let people in, but to get out of her own way. Grist crafts the horror around her beautifully, forcing Tamsin to examine her own life and reactions. She overthinks everything, even her own motivations, and struggles to accept a compliment, reasoning that her internal thoughts mean she is not, in fact, a good person, even if her actions show otherwise.
Tamsin is beautifully flawed. Deeply so. But as we uncover more of her past and the layers that make up Tamsin herself, it’s hard not to feel deeply for her, too. She’s been poorly treated, overlooked, ostracised and while some of that may be down to her own behaviours, some is more subtle – the way she was treated by her parents, the way she struggles to emphasise with others, or even just a truly shitty boss.
By the end of the novel, we are fully on Tamsin’s side. We’ve seen her truly fight, making plenty of mistakes along the way, but still pushing forward. And she grows.
Tamsin is the centre of this book, with everything else building up around her. Grist has done an excellent job with this, and it’s a haunting read in the best kind of way.
Review by Elle Turpitt
Twitter: @elleturpitt
Bluesky: @elleturpitt.bsky.social
I received this ebook from Solaris via NetGalley for review consideration.
