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Absent
She hears her. She swears she does.
The house swears back.
Emma wanted safety. A quiet village. A locked door between her and everything that came before.
But the walls won’t stop whispering.
Notes appear where no one should have been. Footsteps slide through the house at night. Flies gather where they shouldn’t. And someone keeps breathing through the walls.
The neighbours smile as they pass. But inside Emma’s house, reality is cracking. Her daughter grows quieter. The air smells wrong. And something—something patient—is waiting for her to break.
Because the house remembers everything she tried to rewrite.
A chilling psychological horror about a woman trapped between the story she wrote and the truth that’s coming for her.
The house swears back.
Emma wanted safety. A quiet village. A locked door between her and everything that came before.
But the walls won’t stop whispering.
Notes appear where no one should have been. Footsteps slide through the house at night. Flies gather where they shouldn’t. And someone keeps breathing through the walls.
The neighbours smile as they pass. But inside Emma’s house, reality is cracking. Her daughter grows quieter. The air smells wrong. And something—something patient—is waiting for her to break.
Because the house remembers everything she tried to rewrite.
A chilling psychological horror about a woman trapped between the story she wrote and the truth that’s coming for her.
- GenresHorror
210 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 31, 2025
1 person is currently reading
15 people want to read
About the author
Chelsea O'Hara
6 books46 followersChelsea O’Hara writes psychological thrillers grounded in real life, inspired by experiments, human behaviour, and the darkness we try not to see. She’s fascinated by the fragility of memory, the strangeness of isolation, and the way ordinary people fracture under extraordinary pressure.
Her stories mix unsettling psychology with sharp, human edges, a little horror, a little heartbreak, and just enough dark humour to keep the lights on. She likes to say she writes about the things people prefer to ignore, the whispers in the walls, the truths we bury, and the shadows we pretend not to see.
Why did she start writing? She couldn’t tell you. Maybe to make sense of the chaos, maybe to lean into it. She’s always been fascinated by the human mind — why one person breaks and another doesn’t, why some turn cruel while others cling to kindness. Either way, the result is the same: thrillers that crawl under your skin and stay there.”
Chelsea writes best at night, when the house is still, her coffee is strong, and she pretends the scratching in the walls is “just the pipes.”
Her stories mix unsettling psychology with sharp, human edges, a little horror, a little heartbreak, and just enough dark humour to keep the lights on. She likes to say she writes about the things people prefer to ignore, the whispers in the walls, the truths we bury, and the shadows we pretend not to see.
Why did she start writing? She couldn’t tell you. Maybe to make sense of the chaos, maybe to lean into it. She’s always been fascinated by the human mind — why one person breaks and another doesn’t, why some turn cruel while others cling to kindness. Either way, the result is the same: thrillers that crawl under your skin and stay there.”
Chelsea writes best at night, when the house is still, her coffee is strong, and she pretends the scratching in the walls is “just the pipes.”
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 14, 2025
time to try to write a review.
i liked this book. it was good. it wasnt my usual genre but i did enjoy it. i guessed half of the plot tiwst but i defineteky didnt guess the last twist. overall i liked it.
i liked this book. it was good. it wasnt my usual genre but i did enjoy it. i guessed half of the plot tiwst but i defineteky didnt guess the last twist. overall i liked it.
December 26, 2025
Absent is a book about madness. It’s quite unsettling, because we’re in the head of a mother as she goes mad due to the death of her daughter. We see the world through her eyes, so it’s never certain whether we’re experiencing reality or not.
The book is written in short chapters containing short paragraphs, sometimes single sentences, sometimes even sentence fragments. It’s a stream-of-consciousness style, and frankly, it becomes boring after a while, because there’s so much of it. I don’t know if there’s a way to do it better though, given what the author was trying to achieve.
So reading Absent was not a pleasant experience. But given the subject matter, I don’t know how it could be.
The book is written in short chapters containing short paragraphs, sometimes single sentences, sometimes even sentence fragments. It’s a stream-of-consciousness style, and frankly, it becomes boring after a while, because there’s so much of it. I don’t know if there’s a way to do it better though, given what the author was trying to achieve.
So reading Absent was not a pleasant experience. But given the subject matter, I don’t know how it could be.
November 2, 2025
Okay, I have not finished reading it yet, but I am loving this story! I am really enjoying the humour, especially in this story. I won't give anything away here, but I just wanted to say that the author really took their time writing this. It is well worded, grammar on point, and a great story line. I recommend you go check it out, it is currently a free read on Kindle Unlimited Books 😁🤘
December 27, 2025
Potentially offensive items: domestic violence and mental abuse (mentioned), graphic violence, gore, violence against women (mentioned), child abuse and neglect, murder, mature themes, lying, dysfunctional family, eating disorders, psychosis/neurosis/sociopathy
So, just a heads up for non-British readers like me: “Outhouse” (which in America generally refers to a toilet without plumbing) here refers to a small, detached building, which I believe in this case was a studio apartment or mother-in-law suite. I am uncertain why the author used this convention since it seems she is from the U.S. The author also mixed things. For example, the “postman” works at the “Royal Post,” which places this in the U.K., but the people on Emma’s street are overly concerned with Halloween decorations—something more likely to happen in the U.S.
I really liked the beginning of this book, but it quickly regressed into incomplete sentences and one-sentence paragraphs, and by the end, the editing completely failed. Further, there is no inciting event that starts the story on its path. We also never find out why the events that unfold begin right now. There is a mystery—the woman in the outbuilding who pays rent but whom the main character never sees. But the event that causes the main character, Emma, to be terrified of everything, and which begins the actions discussed at the end of the book, didn’t happen. (An example of an inciting event would be in Stephen King’s The Shining when Ullman tells Jack he doesn’t want to hire him but that he must.) Here, Emma is suddenly terrified of every noise her house makes. There were a lot of elements that are in scary horror stories—flies, bad smells, cold rooms—but I didn’t feel like they were connected, and none of it scared me. The book also failed to show a descent into madness that happens in stories like The Yellow Wallpaper. The characters were all held at arm's length.
Like many books with an overabundance of metaphors/similes, there are many of these literary devices that didn’t make sense. There was too much repetition, often of the same metaphor or poetic words (for example, “breath” or some variation of it was used 207 times in a 247-page book), to even qualify it as an “Art for Art’s sake” work. This avalanche of poetic words also did not move the story forward. Instead, we wander around inside and outside of Emma’s house, knowing she is terrified but without enough exposition to make us terrified along with her. There were also a lot of words to tell the reader nothing new. Emma jumped to conclusions that the reader could not logically follow. I never understood why she believed Rachel was making the sounds, for example. Further, Emma's fear starts off at the level of terrified, which not only seemed unjustified, but also gave it nowhere to get worse. We don’t even see her being terrified of when the next event will happen or trying to actually figure out what is happening in between her moments of terror over the sounds.
We also don't see Emma caring about her child—even though we should based on the way she fusses over Lilly/Lily. When Emma hears noises, her concern is solely focused on herself and her fear. For example, she locks the door to keep the thing that is making noises out, but her child is on the other side of that door, too, with that thing. Personally, if I thought my boarder was sneaking into my living area, I would call the cops. That doesn’t cross Emma’s mind, and we never see her choice justified. In fact, as the book works so hard to show us Emma is crazy, that she doesn’t call the police points more to the fact that she is not crazy and knows exactly what she is doing. There are so many things that don’t make sense in the end—mainly because the motivations and some of the events that happened weren’t justified or supported by the rest of the story. I also felt the information dump at the end was more of a cop out: The main character is terrified the entire story, but at the end, we switch to other points of view to find out what the real story was--even though it didn't really make sense.
I rated this book based on the objective review matrix posted on my writing blog.
So, just a heads up for non-British readers like me: “Outhouse” (which in America generally refers to a toilet without plumbing) here refers to a small, detached building, which I believe in this case was a studio apartment or mother-in-law suite. I am uncertain why the author used this convention since it seems she is from the U.S. The author also mixed things. For example, the “postman” works at the “Royal Post,” which places this in the U.K., but the people on Emma’s street are overly concerned with Halloween decorations—something more likely to happen in the U.S.
I really liked the beginning of this book, but it quickly regressed into incomplete sentences and one-sentence paragraphs, and by the end, the editing completely failed. Further, there is no inciting event that starts the story on its path. We also never find out why the events that unfold begin right now. There is a mystery—the woman in the outbuilding who pays rent but whom the main character never sees. But the event that causes the main character, Emma, to be terrified of everything, and which begins the actions discussed at the end of the book, didn’t happen. (An example of an inciting event would be in Stephen King’s The Shining when Ullman tells Jack he doesn’t want to hire him but that he must.) Here, Emma is suddenly terrified of every noise her house makes. There were a lot of elements that are in scary horror stories—flies, bad smells, cold rooms—but I didn’t feel like they were connected, and none of it scared me. The book also failed to show a descent into madness that happens in stories like The Yellow Wallpaper. The characters were all held at arm's length.
Like many books with an overabundance of metaphors/similes, there are many of these literary devices that didn’t make sense. There was too much repetition, often of the same metaphor or poetic words (for example, “breath” or some variation of it was used 207 times in a 247-page book), to even qualify it as an “Art for Art’s sake” work. This avalanche of poetic words also did not move the story forward. Instead, we wander around inside and outside of Emma’s house, knowing she is terrified but without enough exposition to make us terrified along with her. There were also a lot of words to tell the reader nothing new. Emma jumped to conclusions that the reader could not logically follow. I never understood why she believed Rachel was making the sounds, for example. Further, Emma's fear starts off at the level of terrified, which not only seemed unjustified, but also gave it nowhere to get worse. We don’t even see her being terrified of when the next event will happen or trying to actually figure out what is happening in between her moments of terror over the sounds.
We also don't see Emma caring about her child—even though we should based on the way she fusses over Lilly/Lily. When Emma hears noises, her concern is solely focused on herself and her fear. For example, she locks the door to keep the thing that is making noises out, but her child is on the other side of that door, too, with that thing. Personally, if I thought my boarder was sneaking into my living area, I would call the cops. That doesn’t cross Emma’s mind, and we never see her choice justified. In fact, as the book works so hard to show us Emma is crazy, that she doesn’t call the police points more to the fact that she is not crazy and knows exactly what she is doing. There are so many things that don’t make sense in the end—mainly because the motivations and some of the events that happened weren’t justified or supported by the rest of the story. I also felt the information dump at the end was more of a cop out: The main character is terrified the entire story, but at the end, we switch to other points of view to find out what the real story was--even though it didn't really make sense.
I rated this book based on the objective review matrix posted on my writing blog.
January 18, 2026
Chelsea O’Hara’s “Absent” opens strong, establishing an eerie, unsettling mood, and the promise of a haunted house story filtered through a fragile psyche. Unfortunately, that early momentum fades. As the novel progresses, the prose increasingly fragments into incomplete sentences and single-line paragraphs, and by the end the editing feels noticeably lax; my review copy even read as if em-dashes had been removed with no other punctuation to replace them.
More critically, the story never quite ignites. I wasn’t sure I understood the genesis behind this disturbing phenomena. Emma’s fear escalates, but the event that should justify her terror and drive the final act doesn’t feel fleshed out.
O’Hara leans heavily on metaphor and repetition, often circling the same poetic ideas without advancing the narrative. Some similes feel opaque rather than evocative, and there are so many, so close together it gets a little exhausting.
That said, “Absent” is an occasionally engaging portrait of madness, and fans of slightly experimental psychological drama might find it worth their while.
More critically, the story never quite ignites. I wasn’t sure I understood the genesis behind this disturbing phenomena. Emma’s fear escalates, but the event that should justify her terror and drive the final act doesn’t feel fleshed out.
O’Hara leans heavily on metaphor and repetition, often circling the same poetic ideas without advancing the narrative. Some similes feel opaque rather than evocative, and there are so many, so close together it gets a little exhausting.
That said, “Absent” is an occasionally engaging portrait of madness, and fans of slightly experimental psychological drama might find it worth their while.
December 10, 2025
This is an extremely well written book, though it was hard to read. A woman descends into madness, either that, or supernatural things are indeed happening around her. The reader comes to certain, tragic conclusions even as the main character seems to be oblivious to them. People who are easily triggered, especially by child death may want to think twice before reading this book. But people who enjoy psychological thrillers would quite enjoy this one.
November 26, 2025
A must read thriller is what Chelsea O'Hara has created in Absent. Emma is very likeable and I felt for her throughout the book.
I loved the twists and turns that kept you guessing page after page. I would read anything Chelsea writes.
I loved the twists and turns that kept you guessing page after page. I would read anything Chelsea writes.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews