The Lonely Places

by J.M. Morris

In the electrifying tradition of Minette Walters and Ruth Rendell, J. M. Morris savagely plumbs the depths of psychological terror in an uncompromising and brutally brilliant suspense debut. The Lonely Places etches a fiendishly compelling portrait of madness and menace, eroticism and terror, that pits a woman’s mind against a world where nothing is as it seems.

THE LONELY PLACES

“Then along came a spider Who sat down beside her...”

Ruth Gemmill is broken. All she has known, all she has loved, all she has ever desired, have laid her waste. As autumn’s shadows begin to seep through her London home, Ruth escapes to the fading twilight of northern England in a last, desperate attempt to stave off the encroaching darkness. She needs the consolation of her brother, Alex: a man she cannot breathe without.

It’s not the first time. She couldn’t breathe without Matt either. Matt, who used to beat her. Matt, who loved to hurt her. Matt, whom she loved with a masochistic passion that destroyed everything in its path. But Ruth moved on, reinvented herself. Ruth found the strength to escape the terrifying abuse of her domestic existence. Or so she would like to think. Little does she realize the extent of the crippling cobwebs her vicious lover has spun throughout her mind.

But in the grim, foreboding town of Greenwell, where her brother now lives, fate deals Ruth another blow. For Alex has disappeared. To bring him safely home, she will be forced to confront her emotional demons through a bewildering landscape, where the phantoms of a menacing past lurk around every corner, wielding memories, determined to wake Ruth up to the most horrifying reality of all. Some webs can never be swept away, some spiders sting to destroy....

With chilling emotional precision and searing insight, J. M. Morris has created a novel that is at once devastatingly plausible, utterly poignant—and impossible to forget.

Genres: Horror, Suspense

310 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 2002

Reviews

[Melissa Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favourite novels ever! Atmospheric, tense and creepy from the offset-I couldn't put it down. I first read it in 2005 and have read it once more since. Morris has a natural talent for creating the ultimate chills and thrills that any good horror should possess in order to succeed in the genre. There are several chapters where I found myself feeling genuinely terrified....and for me, that's pretty hard to do.
Oh, and you won't see the ending coming. :)

[Juanita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to separate fact from fiction at times, and the ending didn't really help.

[Nola · Rating 2 out of 5]

I sort of guessed where this was going pretty early on. My issue with the ending is when Ruth is talking about if the guy Keith is gay in real life and remembers them having sex in her dream alternate reality... is this not like alluding to Keith possibly sexually abusing vulnerable patients? In the alternate reality, it turned out Ruth had imagined Keith and it was really Liz. What if Ruth was having sex in reality and that's why she was all confused about what she did and with whom, and was having to scramble her alternate reality narrative to match what she was aware was actually happening in reality. I just thought it was a bit weird.

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book turned out to be different from what I thought it would be. Morris writes like a author of the 60s when sentence and paragraph structure had rules. The style, for me, was reminiscent of Phyllis A. Whitney. Because of that I enjoyed reading it. This was a mind bending work....and that's all I will say. You're just going to have to read it yourself!!

[Maria White · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't the kind of book I usually read: it's a sort of horror story set in a creepy town where nothing is normal. Reading it whilst having covid was quite fitting as you're not sure if things are real or not. It is pretty well done and readable and I found the central abusive relationship convincing. But it doesn't exactly take you to a happy place!

[Maddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

TW: abuse
A journey through the mind and life of someone who blames herself for not being able to "fix" her abuser, even after she learns he was abused as a child and this tendency was threaded in his blood long before she ever met him. Character arc is on-target; 4 stars since the main plot is a bit scattered.

[Booksmylove · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final realization did manage to make me cry. All because she fell for the wrong person😭. But, there were a lot of scense I needed explanation for, a lot I didn't undersrand, and an ending the made me frown, not in a good way. Over all, I cried, but it was not enough for me to recommend this to my friends.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I spent weeks slowly making my to the halfway point in the book, and I ended up reading the last half in just one day. (Perhaps, because it was due back to the library or maybe because I finally got involved at that point.)

The book had a lot of promise, and I liked and felt for most of the characters. I loved the dark mysteriousness of the atmosphere and the twists and turns of the plot. That being said, I hated the ending. I had a hard time giving this review 3 stars just because of that.

[Margaret Pritchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Halfway through this book, I told my friend, "when I finish this book I am either going to love this author or want to kill them for sucking me in and then screwing me over with a crappy cop-out of an ending."

Luckily it was the former. This atmospheric mind-screw of a book is in capable hands, and the final reveal is brilliant.

[Santika Garnita · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a long old book I've got and haven't had a chance to read.
i have read it and well some I couldn't get especially when how Ruth suddenlyy woke up at Alex's house in London while she were still in Greenwell.

[Autumn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could have been better. Less threads, more development on the good ones, and a more concrete conclusion. Plus, I found the main character very weak and passive, which after learning she'd been abused I wanted to see her overcome that role--but she never did.

[Heather 🥀 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know where this book came from?? It was just on my book shelf my husband doesn't read so I must have picked it up from somewhere and I have no Idea where but with a name like lonely places a ghost story I was intrigued. It sucked me in I read it in two days. Very good.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little disappointed by the ending. Maybe it was too literary for me ;) The book has kinda been growing on me in retrospect though.

[Raquel · Rating 1 out of 5]

don't waste your time.

[Jayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd probably give this book 3.5 stars, but I was a bit confused at the end, and after reading all that horrific stuff, it ended rather abruptly.