Subtitled "Two Novels of the Supernatural" -- Well, for one thing, it's not all that supernatural -- just some little minor demonic possession. The books are really about the generations of the family who lives at Gad's Hall, and that sort of thing is enjoyable to me. Taken as a whole, the two books form a fairly seamless story that takes place in the present (1977) and the past (1840s-1870s or so). One reason I liked it is that Lofts gives her "from the past" characters every bit as much life and fallibility and lustfulness and weakness as she gives her "contemporary" characters - notwithstanding the fact that the "past" is solidly Victorian England. Her characters aren't loose or low, they're just married or single people leading real (and I felt) well-fleshed lives. Lofts seems to have done her homework per the time period -- I'm no Victoriana scholar, but the setting and dialogue felt honest.

They're good books. Today's reader might enjoy them. I'm glad I found them on the library's shelf. ( )

I read Gad's Hall over a decade ago and really enjoyed it. It was a perfect scary gothic. The Haunting of Gad's Hall sounds like it should be even more chilling, but it wasn't. The beginning was promising and the second part was what it should be, but the majority of the first part (and the book) was the overly-detailed backstory for the house with no haunting whatsoever. ( )