What do you think?
Rate this book
The Haunting of Sorrow's Leap: a Contemporary Gothic Ghost Thriller
Ellen Marx hasn't spoken to the dead since her mother’s death slammed the door to the other side. Now she's hawking crystals at a cut-rate paranormal convention, selling sage to people who wouldn't know a real ghost if it bit them.
When a mysterious challenge draws her and three other broken investigators to a job that pays too well to refuse, Ellen can’t resist. The location is a decaying Hudson Valley mansion owned by reclusive horror author James Utter. Their job is to find out what’s haunting it. The catch is that people who enter Utter Hall don't always come out the same.
As Ellen’s abilities roar back to life, she uncovers something worse than restless spirits. The house is rotting with secrets, a decades-old death no one talks about, and a presence that grows stronger each night. One that knows exactly which wounds to reopen.
Ellen thought she’d buried her past. But this house doesn’t want explanations.
It wants revenge…
From the bestselling author of The Nightmare Room comes a darkly humorous journey into a haunted heart.
When a mysterious challenge draws her and three other broken investigators to a job that pays too well to refuse, Ellen can’t resist. The location is a decaying Hudson Valley mansion owned by reclusive horror author James Utter. Their job is to find out what’s haunting it. The catch is that people who enter Utter Hall don't always come out the same.
As Ellen’s abilities roar back to life, she uncovers something worse than restless spirits. The house is rotting with secrets, a decades-old death no one talks about, and a presence that grows stronger each night. One that knows exactly which wounds to reopen.
Ellen thought she’d buried her past. But this house doesn’t want explanations.
It wants revenge…
From the bestselling author of The Nightmare Room comes a darkly humorous journey into a haunted heart.
- GenresHorror
346 pages, Paperback
Published November 28, 2025
15 people are currently reading
39 people want to read
About the author
Chris Sorensen
66 books156 followersChris Sorensen spends many days and nights locked away inside his own nightmare room. He is the narrator of over 200 audiobooks (including the award-winning The Missing series by Margaret Peterson Haddix) and the recipient of three AudioFile Earphone Awards. Over the past fifteen years, the Butte Theater and Thin Air Theatre Company in Cripple Creek, Colorado have produced dozens of his plays including Dr. Jekyll’s Medicine Show, Werewolves of Poverty Gulch and The Vampire of Cripple Creek. He is the author of the middle grade book The Mad Scientists of New Jersey and has written numerous screenplay including Suckerville, Bee Tornado and The Roswell Project.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 10, 2025
This review was originally published at FanFiAddict.
“Whatever happened to simple hauntings?” one character asks late in The Haunting of Sorrow’s Leap. It’s a fair question, and one readers might find themselves asking too, as author Chris Sorensen twists the usual gothic ghost story and its central figures into irregular configurations. Not that Sorensen has exactly offered up anything in the way of simple hauntings before…
Ailing author James Utter has gathered together a misfit group of individuals with unique powers – we’ve got a psychic whose talents failed her the day her mother died, a reality TV guy who communes with the dead, a colorful lady with an intriguing case of multiple personalities, and another who briefly died as a child. Utter has brought them into his manse to corral and put an end to the dreadful spirit, The Dark Lady, who has brought utter hell to Utter Hall.
What at first feels like a far less-rapey retread of Richard Matheson’s Hell House soon goes into some unexpected directions as Sorensen finds himself back on familiar haunted grounds after writing a pair of fun, gory, B-movie-inspired creature features to follow-up The Messy Man trilogy. Sorrow’s Leap has a nifty hook that fans of those Messy Man books will appreciate – I sure did – but his attempts at filtering the darker elements of a serious-minded ghost story through the fun-loving mood of his much lighter Bee Tornado or Suckerville books make for uneasy bedfellows.
Our central tour guide through Utter Hall is the traumatized Ellen Marx, whom Sorensen puts readers directly in the shoes of with his first-person narration. While we’re mucking about in her head and dealing with insecurity and anger management issues, we get to learn about her strained, oftentimes abusive, relationship with her mother, and why her psychic talents failed her in the wake of her mother’s passing – only to reemerge at Utter Hall. Sorrow’s Leap is about facing and dealing with one’s trauma and the risk of letting that trauma consume you, and possibly those around you, with its all-encompassing darkness. Sorensen handles it nicely, but that in itself is the book’s central problem. Sorrow’s Leap is just too damn nice.
While there’s plenty of deep shadows within Utter Hall, Sorensen is careful not to step too closely to those dark corners. Which isn’t to say Sorrow’s Leap refuses to confront those issues, simply that it does so in a half-hearted attempt to keep things playful. Ellen’s background involving her dying, verbally abusive mother hit awfully close to home for me and perhaps clouded my view and expectations of her story. Having had an awful lot of vitriol hurled my way, as well as a number of hollow threats aimed at, and disgusting things said about, my wife and children by my own narcissistic, verbally abusive, dementia-addled, cancer-riddled father on his deathbed, not to mention all the years prior, I find some things are simply unforgivable and inexcusable. Now, I’m not about to get in a pissing match with Ellen about whose parental abuses were worse or who the bigger victim is, but my own inner rage demon was hoping for more of a cathartic victory than what amounted to some spectral gaslighting and victim blaming. I will simply say, instead, that it is not the job of the abused to forgive their abuser or absolve them of their sins in order for the abused to heal. This mindset is absolutely toxic, and I found Ellen’s reconciliations with her past to be not just a disingenuous Hallmark moment but downright ugly despite Sorensen’s efforts to paint it as a victorious and shining moment of Ellen being the bigger person.
I’ve been reading Sorensen since his debut on the indie horror scene back in 2018 with The Nightmare Room. I was such a fan of that book that, when asked by the author, I happily blurbed his second novel, The Hungry Ones. The familial grief at the heart of The Nightmare Room was honest and raw, but never saccharine, and I wish I’d been able to find more here with that same kind of potency. I dig Sorensen’s body of work as a whole, but I bounced hard off the mood generated in Sorrow’s Leap.
With its themes of trauma and grooming, Sorensen’s sprightly tone bellies the seriousness of these issues. He’s too focused on crafting a feel-good beach read populated with kooky characters that his refusal to truly plumb the dark depths of these topics is a disservice to the material itself and the end result lacks an appropriate gravitas. Sorrow’s Leap is too springy and airy for its own good, and the mood it generates is oftentimes at odds with the subject matter its confronting. While I liked Sorensen’s protagonists well-enough and found them charming in their own quirky ways, I never felt like they were in real peril due to both the overall tone of the book and the lack of consequences for either the heroes or villains. With each of their lives in his hands, Sorensen plays it too safe throughout, and I found myself wishing he was more ruthless and willing to raise the stakes in more permanent ways. There are serious issues at the heart of Sorrow’s Leap, but they aren’t handled with the seriousness they deserve.
That’s not to say this book needed to be unremittingly grim. There are ways of telling stories like this, where the darker subjects underpinning the narrative are explored in cozier fashion – TC Parker excels at this in her Hummingbird Universe books – but Sorensen doesn’t quite find the right balance here. Playful silliness works well in a book like Bee Tornado thanks to its riffing on SyFy Channel shlock, but it’s not a tone that carries over well to a book steeped in more grounded, earthly affairs. Sorrow’s Leap succeeds in its efforts at being an inconsequential popcorn kind of read that offers a neat wrinkle on a familiar trope, and will likely be welcomed by many, but I found it to be too weightless and too eager to kowtow to dangerous stereotypes regarding the relationship between the abused and their abuser when it should have been upending them entirely, preferably in horrifically violent ways and with more pathos than is given here.
“Whatever happened to simple hauntings?” one character asks late in The Haunting of Sorrow’s Leap. It’s a fair question, and one readers might find themselves asking too, as author Chris Sorensen twists the usual gothic ghost story and its central figures into irregular configurations. Not that Sorensen has exactly offered up anything in the way of simple hauntings before…
Ailing author James Utter has gathered together a misfit group of individuals with unique powers – we’ve got a psychic whose talents failed her the day her mother died, a reality TV guy who communes with the dead, a colorful lady with an intriguing case of multiple personalities, and another who briefly died as a child. Utter has brought them into his manse to corral and put an end to the dreadful spirit, The Dark Lady, who has brought utter hell to Utter Hall.
What at first feels like a far less-rapey retread of Richard Matheson’s Hell House soon goes into some unexpected directions as Sorensen finds himself back on familiar haunted grounds after writing a pair of fun, gory, B-movie-inspired creature features to follow-up The Messy Man trilogy. Sorrow’s Leap has a nifty hook that fans of those Messy Man books will appreciate – I sure did – but his attempts at filtering the darker elements of a serious-minded ghost story through the fun-loving mood of his much lighter Bee Tornado or Suckerville books make for uneasy bedfellows.
Our central tour guide through Utter Hall is the traumatized Ellen Marx, whom Sorensen puts readers directly in the shoes of with his first-person narration. While we’re mucking about in her head and dealing with insecurity and anger management issues, we get to learn about her strained, oftentimes abusive, relationship with her mother, and why her psychic talents failed her in the wake of her mother’s passing – only to reemerge at Utter Hall. Sorrow’s Leap is about facing and dealing with one’s trauma and the risk of letting that trauma consume you, and possibly those around you, with its all-encompassing darkness. Sorensen handles it nicely, but that in itself is the book’s central problem. Sorrow’s Leap is just too damn nice.
While there’s plenty of deep shadows within Utter Hall, Sorensen is careful not to step too closely to those dark corners. Which isn’t to say Sorrow’s Leap refuses to confront those issues, simply that it does so in a half-hearted attempt to keep things playful. Ellen’s background involving her dying, verbally abusive mother hit awfully close to home for me and perhaps clouded my view and expectations of her story. Having had an awful lot of vitriol hurled my way, as well as a number of hollow threats aimed at, and disgusting things said about, my wife and children by my own narcissistic, verbally abusive, dementia-addled, cancer-riddled father on his deathbed, not to mention all the years prior, I find some things are simply unforgivable and inexcusable. Now, I’m not about to get in a pissing match with Ellen about whose parental abuses were worse or who the bigger victim is, but my own inner rage demon was hoping for more of a cathartic victory than what amounted to some spectral gaslighting and victim blaming. I will simply say, instead, that it is not the job of the abused to forgive their abuser or absolve them of their sins in order for the abused to heal. This mindset is absolutely toxic, and I found Ellen’s reconciliations with her past to be not just a disingenuous Hallmark moment but downright ugly despite Sorensen’s efforts to paint it as a victorious and shining moment of Ellen being the bigger person.
I’ve been reading Sorensen since his debut on the indie horror scene back in 2018 with The Nightmare Room. I was such a fan of that book that, when asked by the author, I happily blurbed his second novel, The Hungry Ones. The familial grief at the heart of The Nightmare Room was honest and raw, but never saccharine, and I wish I’d been able to find more here with that same kind of potency. I dig Sorensen’s body of work as a whole, but I bounced hard off the mood generated in Sorrow’s Leap.
With its themes of trauma and grooming, Sorensen’s sprightly tone bellies the seriousness of these issues. He’s too focused on crafting a feel-good beach read populated with kooky characters that his refusal to truly plumb the dark depths of these topics is a disservice to the material itself and the end result lacks an appropriate gravitas. Sorrow’s Leap is too springy and airy for its own good, and the mood it generates is oftentimes at odds with the subject matter its confronting. While I liked Sorensen’s protagonists well-enough and found them charming in their own quirky ways, I never felt like they were in real peril due to both the overall tone of the book and the lack of consequences for either the heroes or villains. With each of their lives in his hands, Sorensen plays it too safe throughout, and I found myself wishing he was more ruthless and willing to raise the stakes in more permanent ways. There are serious issues at the heart of Sorrow’s Leap, but they aren’t handled with the seriousness they deserve.
That’s not to say this book needed to be unremittingly grim. There are ways of telling stories like this, where the darker subjects underpinning the narrative are explored in cozier fashion – TC Parker excels at this in her Hummingbird Universe books – but Sorensen doesn’t quite find the right balance here. Playful silliness works well in a book like Bee Tornado thanks to its riffing on SyFy Channel shlock, but it’s not a tone that carries over well to a book steeped in more grounded, earthly affairs. Sorrow’s Leap succeeds in its efforts at being an inconsequential popcorn kind of read that offers a neat wrinkle on a familiar trope, and will likely be welcomed by many, but I found it to be too weightless and too eager to kowtow to dangerous stereotypes regarding the relationship between the abused and their abuser when it should have been upending them entirely, preferably in horrifically violent ways and with more pathos than is given here.
December 15, 2025
What strikes me most about Sorensen’s writing is that, beneath the horror and the scares and the mystery, lies a streak of genuine heart and humanity. You can’t help but root for his misfit protagonists. I hope (and trust) we will see more of Ellen Marx in future books. And the sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.
I devoured this book. Finished it in two sittings. It’s taut, surprising, and incredibly well- written. I look forward to whatever comes next.
I devoured this book. Finished it in two sittings. It’s taut, surprising, and incredibly well- written. I look forward to whatever comes next.
December 11, 2025
With The Haunting of Sorrow’s Leap, Chris Sorensen has created a taut, steadily engrossing, haunted thriller, that brings his band of relatable, just off-center characters, who happen to be saddled with psychic abilities, and uneven pasts, face to face with harrowing, unquenchable, demons and things. In his previous writings, and here again, Sorensen has the uncanny ability to dramatically draw opposing worlds, and his reader, closer and closer to the action, having his characters clash with their own fears, while he deftly has them dueling with frightening, other worldly, relentless, let’s call them spirited, and tenacious, aptly defined, Monsters. Fans of Sorensen’s Messy Man book series will be stoked to see his character Ellen Marx, squarely back in the driver’s seat. Like the underdog champion she is, Marx wills herself off the mat time and time again, pulling her uneven mates with her, as she battles and tangles with an array of haunters, worthy of the encroaching title of this book, that laps up against the heels of his very real, very human characters, and his reader’s alike.
December 11, 2025
Well, this was a fun surprise! I happened to find this book serendipitously and could not put it down.
No spoilers here, but while the cover and the title suggest a very hokey old-school romantic/horror story--this was not. Modern, fun, VERY engaging characters that were both well developed and likeable, the story took me to places I was not expecting. In my opinion, that is always a plus for this genre. Well done, Mr. Sorensen!!
No spoilers here, but while the cover and the title suggest a very hokey old-school romantic/horror story--this was not. Modern, fun, VERY engaging characters that were both well developed and likeable, the story took me to places I was not expecting. In my opinion, that is always a plus for this genre. Well done, Mr. Sorensen!!
December 11, 2025
Chris Sorensen's prose is crisp, his characters like old friends you just met, and his plots keep you turning. Like his Messy Man series, the Haunting of Sorrow's Leap engages you from first page to last. The turns are unexpected but rewarding and the horror plays out all the more effectively because of the flawed humanity of the characters themselves. It's a terrific read!
December 11, 2025
Sorensen mixes grief and horror in equal measure to create a tale worthy of a horror lover’s shelves. Dark humor and scares combine to make a heartfelt horror that will linger long after you read it. So good. I’m a fan!
December 23, 2025
I absolutely adore this book, it's most definitely in the top reads of the year for me! The writing flows so smoothly, characters are so well written and believable, and the creep factor is set to 100%! If you enjoy haunted houses/ghosts tropes, this one is such a refreshing and modern take!
December 11, 2025
I loved this! It is a page turning fun and scary ride. Great story and wonderful characters! I have read a few Sorensen books now and he does not disappoint. His imagination is incredible.
December 14, 2025
Great read! There's some wonderful humor in amidst the horror... and I was particularly fond of the eclectic band of misfits at the core of this story. Hope to see more of Ellen Marx in the future!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews