Review: Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill

This was an intriguing book rather than an engaging one. It’s not the most original story – all the elements of a haunted house story are there. An old, exclusive apartment block in Kensington. A mysterious apartment that remains locked but from which strange sounds emanate. An evil presence that tortures the residents in both life and death. The ageing residents themselves, who guard a terrible secret that binds them together as it tears them apart.

It’s the treatment of these tropes that lifts the book. Art becomes both catalyst and reason for the ghostly (or even ghastly) goings-on in apartment 16. And there are enough twists and turns to keep you reading on. One character in particular seems to be innocuous but turns out to have a dark secret of their own.

Into this charged situation come Apryl, an American who has just inherited an apartment in the Barrington House and everything inside from her great aunt Lillian, whom she never knew, and Seth, an artist who has moved to London to pursue his dream of painting but ended up working the graveyard shift as night watchman at the block.

Apryl discovers the mystery of apartment 16 when reading her aunt’s increasingly confused journals and is determined to find out what happened. Seth is drawn to the rooms on his nightly rounds of the building and finds himself in deep over his head.

But it was these two characters that didn’t work for me. I found neither at all sympathetic. Apryl comes across as rather self-obsessed, while Seth is pathetic and self-pitying. I found myself not caring what happened to them, not caring whether they lived or died. What I did care about, though, was the mystery. I wanted to know what happened in apartment 16 and what still happening. I was intrigued about the real identity of the evil presence.

So, not a perfect book, but certainly a readable one.