In 2004 a group of six students, who have newly arrived at university and quickly become friends, are beset by supernatural forces, which seem to centre around a 5th floor room in an otherwise innocuous student hall of residence. So insidious and terrifying is their ordeal that one of the six commits suicide, an act which drives an irreparable wedge between the rest.
Twenty years later, the remaining five friends are all living very different lives. Hannah Prentice is a divorcee with two children, the youngest of whom is being badly bullied at school, and a mother who is showing the first signs of dementia; Jess Maple is a professional artist, who is just about to break into the big time; Steve Lazenby is a successful architect, whose eight-year-old daughter is suffering from delusions and nightmares; Max Bradshaw is a self-employed plumber, happily married with three children, whose fourteen-year-old son has fallen in with the wrong crowd; and Michael Vance, bohemian and charismatic at university, is now a drug-addicted vagrant, who harbours a terrible secret…
Although the five friends have not been in contact for almost two decades, they are gradually drawn back together when their lives begin to fall apart. What happened to them twenty years ago seems to be seeping back into the present, affecting not just them this time, but their children, their partners, their loved ones.
As the terrifying visions, the violence and the madness escalate, they must mobilise forces and once again confront the horror in Room 55
Former college besties who have not seen each other since a tragedy drove them apart twenty years ago are suddenly besieged by dark forces from the past.
Told on two timelines, the story begins in the present day, where Hannah, Jess, Steve, Max, and Michael are living very different lives, when Michael appears at Hannah's door out of the blue with a dire message.
"It was in me, but it's out. warn the others."
This is the catalyst for a string of terrifying events that not everyone will survive.
We learn through flashbacks about the strange occurrences that took place twenty years ago in the creepy haunted dorm room on the fifth floor, where "bad things" have happened, but it's the present day where the true evil is manifesting now that Michael can no longer contain the entity.
I was most engaged with Max, Hannah, and Steve's points of view, mainly because they all had families and children who were involved in some of the scariest scenes. There were some things in particular that happened to Hannah's mom that I am not sure I'll ever get over! If you are in the mood for an unnerving supernatural horror, this is for you.
My thanks to Flame Tree Press for the paperback ARC.
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