THE HAUNTING OF MORRIS INN Book Review

The Haunting of Morris Inn (book 4 in The Beckoning Dead series) by Ambrose Ibsen, eBook, 257 pages

Synopsis from GoodReads: “Have you seen her—the woman with no eyes? She walks the halls at night...”

Grappling with a terrible loss, Sadie's life seems to be spiraling out of control. Pushed to the brink of madness by researches into her own origins and the debauched cult that served her mother, she finds herself isolated, with no one to turn to. Her days are grey and lonely; her nights teem with dread of far-off figures that beckon from the shadows.

Meanwhile, at the remote Morris Inn, a distraught young woman fleeing troubles of her own takes a room. There, she unwittingly becomes ensnared by a most sinister presence. A foul spirit walks the halls of the inn at night, feeding upon the suffering of troubled lodgers. Those who encounter her tend to die gruesome and inexplicable deaths—a tradition that spans the entirety of the inn's sordid history.

Sadie has a choice to make. Will she turn her back on the past and start a new life, or will she venture to the shadowed inn and seek out the thread that binds its resident terror to her accursed mother—and perhaps save the life of a troubled guest in the process?

The Haunting of Morris Inn is the fourth novel in the Beckoning Dead series.

BOOK REVIEW: I forgot how much I enjoyed this series. It's been a long time since I read book 3, The Haunting of Winslow Manor, but I didn't think I needed a refresher. Turns out there was a character that I believe came in at some point in book 3 and made an appearance here in book 4 that I forgot about. I remembered the name but not the character's role in the previous book. Just looked and it was in 2023 that I read Winslow Manor so that makes sense. It still felt very familiar despite having been about 3 years since I was last in this world. One of the things I enjoy about reading this author's work is that he can tell a very good spooky story. We may have gotten terrifyingly graphic images in the original Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark when we were kids but his descriptions of the things are equally as terrifyingly graphic and I am here for it all! That is something he keeps consistent through all the stories of his that I have listened to and read so if that's something you enjoy as well, definitely give his books a try. I think a lot or all of his eBooks are in the KU member library as well.

Overall this got a 4 star rating for me. I don't know if he plans to add another book into this series or not. It feels like it was left open if he wanted to but as with the other books in this series, they are kind of like stand alones with a little bit of a story linking them all together. For example we get very little mention of her mother in this story but if you hadn't read the other books you won't understand the significance and actually is was the lack of her mother that had me knocking this down to a 4 star read. Her mother has been such a huge presence in the previous books and then we get a mention but nothing more. It was a little disappointing. The story was still wonderful. The characters are great and he does an amazing job with his scenes. The story feels complete but does the series feel complete...I don't know.

4/5 Stars

2026 Reading Challenge: 4/55 complete