The Haunting of Paynes Hollow

Kelley Armstrong is an author I’ve been wanting to read for some time, and my starting point is her newest release, The Haunting of Paynes Hollow. This horror novel takes inspiration from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, giving it a new twist in a different setting.

When she was younger, Samantha Payne witnessed her dad burying the body of a local teenager; he then died by suicide. Sam has spent years reeling from this tragedy and avoiding her mean grandfather, who himself never believed what Sam saw. Now her grandfather is dead, and his will states that, if Sam stays at her old family cottage for one full month, she’ll inherit ten million dollars. Cruel and traumatic… yet worth the money. But when Sam arrives at Paynes Hollow, strange things start happening, and it’s clear that the past is about to catch up with her.

What I Liked:

• Family complications. From the first chapter, it’s obvious that Sam’s family is a little messed up. Her dad apparently murdered a teen boy. Her grandfather plays cruel tricks involving money and inheritances. Things only get more convoluted from there!
• Increasing sense of danger. The problems start off with dead animals and blinking lights in the lake, but it quickly escalates. Trespassers, missing people, moving hatchets, creepy sounds in the dark… it seems that every night she’s there, Sam is experiencing worse dangers. But she can’t leave.
• Psychological doubt. Is Sam behind her own hauntings? Has she snapped, as her aunt suggests, and it’s taking the form of seeing things and, in a haze, committing the very atrocities that scare her in daylight hours? I do love an unreliable narrator, and Sam is sometimes set up to be exactly that.
• Supernatural elements! This novel is woven in with legends and folklore, including the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow and some creatures from old mythologies. I love horror stories that lean into the supernatural, so I enjoyed getting more of that side as this book progressed.

Audiobook:

EJ Lavery does a great job narrating The Haunting of Paynes Hollow. She captures each of the characters well, giving them subtle accents and manners of speaking to make each one distinct. She also brings out the sense of unease throughout the novel. The audiobook kept me engaged from start to finish.

Final Thoughts

The Haunting of Paynes Hollow is a gripping supernatural thriller/horror. It’s creepy and keeps you guessing, and I enjoyed the different themes woven into it. This is my first time reading Kelley Armstrong, and based on this, I’m eager to read more. I’m especially excited to read more of her horror novels, as well as her romances and her two time-slip fantasy series.

Special thanks to St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy The Haunting of Paynes Hollow here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

The Haunting of Paynes Hollow by Kelley Armstrong
Audiobook Narrator	EJ Lavery
Audience	Adult
Genre	Horror
Setting	New York
Number of Pages	288
Format I Read	Audiobook & Ebook (NetGalley ARCs)
Original Publication Date	October 14, 2025
Publisher	St. Martin’s Press

Official Summary

From New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong comes a nail-biting supernatural horror about a haunted lakeside property and twisted family secrets.

When Samantha Payne’s grandfather dies, she figures she won’t even get a mention in the will. After all, she hasn’t seen him in fourteen years, not since her father took his own life after being accused of murdering a child at their lakefront cottage. Her grandfather always insisted her father was innocent, despite Sam having caught him burying the child’s body, his clothing streaked with blood.

But when she does attend the reading of the will at the behest of her aunt, she discovers that her grandfather left her the very valuable lakefront property where the family cottage sits. There’s one catch: Sam needs to stay in the cottage for a month. To finally face the fact she was wrong and her father was innocent, in her grandfather’s words.

Traveling to Paynes Hollow, Sam is faced with the realities of her childhood and the secrets kept hidden in the shadows of her memories. When her aunt goes missing a couple days into their stay, Sam begins to question everything again. Plagued by nightmares and paranoia, she begins hearing sounds in the forest and seeing shapes crawling from the water as the rippling waves of the lake promise something unspeakably dark lurking just below their surface.