The Thin Place

By: C D Major

Narrated by: Elle Newlands

Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

She has to know the truth about Overtoun Estate, but there is a reason it has stayed buried for so long.

When journalist Ava Brent decides to investigate the dark mystery of Overtoun Estate — a "thin place", steeped in myth — she has no idea how dangerous this story will be for her.

Overtoun looms over the town, watching, waiting: the locals fearful of the strange building and the secrets it keeps. When Ava starts to ask questions, the warm welcome she first receives turns to a cold shoulder. And before she knows it, Ava is caught in the house’s grasp too.

After she discovers the history of a sick young girl who lived there, she starts to understand the sadness that shrouds it. But when she finds an ominous old message etched into a windowsill, she is forced to wonder — what horrors is the house protecting? And what will it cost her to find out?

With her own first child on the way, Ava knows she should stay away. But even as her life starts to unravel, and she receives chilling threats, the house and the bridge keep pulling her back....

©2021 by C D Major. (P)2021 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“Elle Newlands superbly narrates this novel about three people with compelling connections to an adjacent estate. In a rich Scottish brogue, Newlands describes modern-day Ava's compelling feelings of being drawn to the estate when she investigates a story for her TV station. As the story shifts to 1949, Newlands uses a quiet, childish tone for the first-person account of Constance, a sickly child who is locked in the mansion by her domineering mother. The 1929 story of Marion, a naïve newlywed whose husband brings her to the isolated estate, is told in a refined English voice. The three characterizations work well to help listeners follow the plot and shifting time frames.” (AudioFile Magazine)

“Read it for the eerie atmosphere and the surprising way the three women’s stories come together.”(Good Housekeeping)

“I devoured this novel in a single sitting, transfixed by the unfolding story, and by characters so real I felt myself holding my breath on their behalf. Gripping and unsettling, The Thin Place will stay with you long after you turn the final page.” (Clare Mackintosh, bestselling author of After the End)

Great Idea. Poor execution.

The publisher's synopsis suckered me into buying this one. I felt it had a great premise.
For me, the author did a good job with dialogue. The descriptive language made each scene come alive. BUT the story simply didn’t move forward. The main characters kept talking about the eeriness of the place, but nothing ever happened to vet that claim. The story treads water. Almost halfway through, I was very impatient. By chapter 28, I knew nothing more than I had learned in the first few chapters. The idea of dogs being compelled to jump off a bridge didn’t really send shivers down my spine. More comical than creepy.
The narrator did a solid job except the little girl's voice was pretty rough to listen to. Unfortunately, she was one of the main characters.
Overall, great idea with poor execution.

Fantastic book and with my favorite narrator!

I can’t recommend this book highly enough! I never leave reviews, but this deal was so fantastic that I just had to add a comment.

Enjoy and be blessed.

I "canna" handle the narration

5 star reviews?! This is reminiscent of one long recitation by Lucky the Leprechaun. Ridiculous!

Taught me a bit of history

After listening to this book, I immediately looked up Overtoun Bridge and the story around it. Fascinating.

The narrator was fantastic, especially the Constance character - extremely authentic. I loved listening to Constance.

Well done.

It was okay

I found the story pretty good, but I didn't like the narration off it. I wish the concept of a thin place was more throughly described.

The story was ok but the narration is appalling

I’m finding myself wishing that I’d returned this title. The narration is awful. The narrators speech patterns sound like a marks and spencer advert rather than an actor reading a book. You can hear the smile in her voice throughout at the most inappropriate places. You literally have that drummed out of you in the first week of drama school. It’s really poor. The pronunciation of a lot of the dialogue is really poor as are the stresses of most words in most sentences. Her RP is appalling and I can’t work out why she gives a child who’s parents speak RP and who has little or no contact with anyone else apart from them a broad Scottish accent. It makes no sense. It feels as if she picked up the book 2 seconds before recording and dashed through it without thinking. Really shocking that she has work as a narrator. The book itself was ok. I reallu enjoyed the first half and stayed with it hoping that it would become exciting but it fell a bit flat. There’s no suspense and it’s not chilling in any way. The blurb had suggested otherwise so I was expecting more. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but had the narration been competent it would have been a good enough book to listen to even though it didn’t set my world on fire.

Well written and performed but….

What a miserable depressing story! Relentlessly sad. Read really well and written beautifully but, oh boy, too tragic.

Strangely enjoyable

An interesting story, and probably one that's better to read than to listen to. The narrator mispronounced several words, her Scottish accent was odd but she did adapt her voice to the different characters. The voice she used for the child was particularly irritating and detracted from the story somewhat. Nonetheless, the story is a reasonable listen.