These Familiar Walls by C.J. Dotson
Release Date: 4/14/26
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
By Matt Spaulding
In her sophomore novel, These Familiar Walls, C.J. Dotson crafts an eerie, tense, mysterious haunted house story that I had trouble putting down when it was time to be a responsible adult and get some sleep.
Set mostly during the COVID lockdown of 2020, the story focuses on Amber, her husband, Ben, and their two children, Xander and Marigold. Amber’s entire family is dead, her sister having died in a house fire three years prior, and her parents having been murdered the year before. Amber and her family move into her parents’ old home after their death to get out of their cramped apartment and have more space to be in lockdown.
But, once in the home, things start to get spooky, and strange things start to occur. Amber’s reflection never look right. Everyone starts experiencing strange (and potentially deadly) trance-like states. Amber hears strange whispers.
Interspersed throughout the novel are flashbacks to Amber’s childhood and the friendship she had with the person who eventually murdered her parents, as well as her relationship with her family. I feel that saying much more about this part of the book may give some hints as to the mystery of the haunting, so all I will say is this is where Dotson begins to give us much more insight into Amber as a person than the “all is well” front adult Amber puts on.
The story is compelling and incredibly readable. Dotson’s prose is excellent: modern and smooth but also filled with incredible descriptive language, similes, and metaphors. The characters she presents here are well-crafted, believable, and certain to bring a lot of feelings up in the reader.
Any fan of haunted house tales is certain to enjoy These Familiar Walls. It’s perfectly creepy and mysterious, and, as I said earlier, hard to put down.