Sweet Heart

by Peter James

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Lorsque Charley voit la maison de ses rêves pour la première fois, c’est comme si elle l’avait toujours connue, qu’elle y avait déjà habité. Et lorsqu’elle y emménage avec son mari Tom, son impression se transforme en véritable certitude.
Malheureusement, ce sont de bien sinistres souvenirs de cette vie antérieure qui la hantent. Des souvenirs si terrifiants et violents que Charley décide d’entamer des séances d’hypnose.
Mais elle est loin d’imaginer l’ampleur de ce qui va lui être révélé...

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Crime, Paranormal, Suspense

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Peter James is a global bestselling author, best known for writing crime and thriller novels, and the creator of the much-loved Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. With a total of 21 Sunday Times No. 1s under his belt, he has achieved global book sales of over 23 million copies to date and has been translated into 38 languages.

Synonymous with plot-twisting page-turners, Peter has garnered an army of loyal fans throughout his storytelling career – which also included stints writing for TV and producing films. He has won over 40 awards for his work, including the WHSmith Best Crime Author of All Time Award, Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger and a BAFTA nomination for The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons for which he was an Executive Producer. Many of Peter’s novels have been adapted for film, TV and stage.

Reviews

[Richard Gardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Regression is the theme of this gripping novel. Through hypnotism a woman is taken back to a previous life where horrors await her. This is Peter James at his very best.

[Danielle-Gemma💜 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a massive fan of Peter James and love his Roy Grace series and therefore bought every other book he has written too 😂

I have just finished the two House on Cold Hill (HOCH) books and Possession and have been delighted to find more with a bit of a Stephen King feel to it for me and I loved it.

This book is spooky, gripping and ghoulish! I would definitely recommend and this will be sitting on my bookshelf for sure! I am a massive fan of Peter James’ Roy Grace series and have become very enamoured with the characters: his standalone don’t have this effect as much, however having read all these spooky thrillers pretty much back to back as there are continuing themes throughout I’ve enjoyed these books so much more as it always feels like reading an unrelated standalone series of books.

I would definitely recommend, and I am looking forward to reading more of his standalone books in the coming months 📚📚📚

[Baba · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although the story was good and the mystery, mysterious, I found this supernatural thriller hard-work as I struggled to finish it. Nothing like as good and well written as his 'Dead Simple' Brighton based crime series, although this was first published in 1990! 4 out of 12.

[Lata · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess this book was ghost-written by Mary Higgins Clark. Peter James, who has written the delightful Roy Grace series was completely missing.
Just like the heroine in this book, I felt a sense of déjà vu, because this story is done to death in every Indian movie with the theme of reincarnation.

Besides, I disliked all the characters in this book. I don't have any sympathy for irrational and impractical fools who deliberately buy a dilapidated house which should have been bull-dozed to the ground.

The author tries to create an atmospheric feel but fails. I think it is best left to the likes of Stephen king.
In the end i couldn't understand a few things, because I was skipping paragraphs. I don't know what happened to Hugh, and I didn't have the patience to re-read to know what really happened to him.

[Margo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't like anything about this book, least of all the injuries to animals so vividly described.

[BookScout · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first Peter James book I read and I love a good haunted house story but little did I realise I'd be jumping everytime a door creaked at home for a week afterwards, and that was during the daytime...

It is a throughly well written thriller/horror with a strong protagonist whose fiesty determination to uncover the truth makes her likeable.
There are some haunting incidences that really stay with you.

James' ability to build tension and to keep a pacey narrative turns this book into a page turning, heart thumping, ghost train of a ride.
The shocks keep you on the edge of your seat and sometimes you have to remind yourself to breathe.

As the plot unravelled I found myself figuring out the conclusion, but I'm not sure if this is what we were meant to do. But then I don't think the book was spoiled by this as the quality of the writing and the pace of the narrative are very rewarding.

Overall an excellent introduction to Peter James' spooky supernatural novels and one that will keep you guessing until the very last sentence...

[Cameron Trost · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't read many novels because they tend to be short on substance and full of repetition compared to short stories and novellas. This story is no exception. It's rather predictable, and some chapters were supposed to end with a twist, but too much foreshadowing or the lack of originality allows the reader to see them coming. The use of dream sequences and some of the prose is a little tacky too. Nevertheless, I kept reading this book and quite enjoyed it, perhaps because the setting and characters were interesting. For this reason, I can't bring myself to give it fewer than three stars. That said, it has yet again confirmed my admiration for shorter fiction, especially in the genres of horror fiction and ghost stories. Has Peter James written any good short stories?

[Rosaria Battiloro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classica lettura di genere che sembra riprendere un po' tutti i trope che abbiamo visto e rivisto in decine di film e spiattellarli in sequenza, ma in modo decisamente divertente. Alcuni passaggi sono un po' pulp, richiamano alla mente certi eccessi del cinema horror delle decadi passate, la protagonista non è delle più sveglie, ma in generale l'ho trovato di buon intrattenimento, con qualche colpo di scena carino, e senza pretese.

[Isabelle Rancourt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Voilà, fini !
Histoire de régression, de vie antérieure.
Une femme qui décide de faire appel à un hypnologue pour l'aider dans ses démarches de conception.. maisss ells découvre toutes sortes de choses qui la changeront.

[Kana Skye · Rating 4 out of 5]

"C'est trop gros ça ne passera jamais !"

Lecture surprenante ! De l'horreur à la psychose bien amener (même si je n'ai jamais eu peur car je suis super forte ! 👀) L'auteur sait mettre l'ambiance, amener chaque sujet. Paix à tous c'est petit chieng 🥺

[emanumela · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[Sue Bridgwater · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am totally flummoxed by the blurb on the back cover of this book, quoted from The Daily Express; 'James has been compared with Stephen King but in many ways he's better.' It must have been written by someone who has never read any Stephen King. One cannot write a horror story simple by presenting a sequence of 'shocks' interspersed with really dreadfully written sex scenes and peopled by cardboard cutouts.
For a really good book about patterns repeating in successive generations in a haunted place, read Alan Garner's 'The Owl Service.'

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this classic haunted house story. Found myself drawn into the story and couldn't put the book down. A couple of the characters were pretty stereotypical but the thing about stereotypes is that they do actually exist! I thought Charley was a bit slow in places but I had to remind myself how difficult it would be for someone to accept paranormal happenings in real life.
Those small things aside I found the book totally absorbing and would recommend it to ghost story fans.

[Myriam Dhupar · Rating 4 out of 5]

C'est le premier livre de cet auteur que je lis et j'en ressors un peu mitigée 😕

L'auteur nous plonge dans la vie de Charley et Tom, trente-cinq ans passés tous les deux et l'envie de fonder une famille. Malheureusement, Charley ne tombe toujours pas enceinte et leur couple commence à s'ébranler. Ils décident de déménager en pleine campagne. Les vestiges d'une vie antérieure et ses souvenirs hantent la maison et l'esprit de Charley. Plus le temps passe, plus les phénomènes étranges se multiplient et mettent Charley en danger... 😨

Je vais commencer en évoquant le gros point noir de cette lecture selon moi : la lenteur du récit 😴 Alors, certes, on est ici dans de l'horreur, dans la suggestion, et je pense que je ne suis pas le bon public pour ce genre de livre. Ça manque de rythme et de réelle action, j'ai dû m'accrocher pour vraiment avancer et heureusement que ma partenaire de lecture m'a motivée. Je me suis sentie noyée dans les interminables descriptions des lieux 🙄

Ensuite, j'ai plutôt bien aimé l'idée de l'histoire, je l'ai trouvée originale. Pourtant, j'ai aussi eu du mal sur le sujet : les vies antérieures, la réincarnation. Je n'y crois absolument pas et forcément, je n'ai pas réussi à m'accrocher aux premières pages comme je l'aurais voulu 😬
En dehors du sujet, j'ai détesté Tom et la suite de l'histoire m'a donné raison. Je l'ai trouvé si peu empathique, radin, égocentrique. Quant à Charley, j'ai une impression plus mitigée. Je n'ai pas réussi à m'attacher à son personnage, je n'étais absolument pas en phase avec son désir d'enfant et la façon dont elle s'écrase devant Tom 😒

Et puis, l'histoire a pris une tout autre tournure et j'ai enfin dévoré les pages. J'ai enfin réussi à accrocher, à apprécier ma lecture. J'ai lu les 80 dernières pages en apnée, le rythme a carrément changé de cadence et j'étais incapable de m'arrêter avant de connaître enfin la finalité. Tous les éléments qui ont été rapportés auparavant et qui nous plongeaient dans la perplexité, dans le mystère, se sont imbriqués à la fin et... la lumière fut. À vrai dire, si on omet le rythme lent, c'est parfaitement orchestré, ficelé. Un subtil mélange entre vie passée et vie présente 😇
J'émets cependant une réserve sur l'épilogue. Je ne l'ai pas trouvé logique. Too much peut-être. Les pages de trop selon moi. Et on finit par se demander : est-ce qu'elle n'aurait pas tout imaginé finalement ?🤔

En conclusion, un livre intéressant sur certains aspects mais je regrette vraiment la lenteur des trois quarts 😞

[Dane Cobain · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a bit of a strange experience, because James has definitely evolved as a writer since he came up with this one. At the same time, it wasn’t bad, although a few of the references dated it back to the early nineties when it was released. But that doesn’t really matter because the story itself is what makes it worth reading.

Sure, it has its fair share of clichés, but it’s also a haunted house story. In fact, it basically read like an early draft of The House on Cold Hill, and I enjoyed that one and so I enjoyed this one too. The writing was never clunky, but there were a few points at which it was perhaps overly simple. That said, it did exactly what it needed to do to tell the story, and I can’t really complain about it.

I’m not sure if I’d say this is a particularly good place to start with Peter James, but if you’ve read a few of his other books and perhaps you feel like a break from Roy Grace, this could well be the book for you. That’s especially true if you’re more of a fan of horror and the supernatural than police procedural novels, although I’m a fan of both and personally think that he’s better at the latter.

I also liked the way that everything all came together here, although it was perhaps a little predictable. But that made it a lot easier for me to keep track of what was going on and who was who, and so I never once felt lost. The result was just a pretty easy read that did still leave me feeling a little bit unsettled, to the point at which I was checking over my shoulder in my house to make sure that I was still alone. If that doesn’t sell this book, I don’t know what will.

[Soph · Rating 3 out of 5]

a good little book!! i thought the story line was pretty unique, but it was set up in a way where i did guess it pretty early on. the writing was amazing and the content pretty grizzly, but i felt the ending was rushed and didn’t have much of a resolution at all. i will check out more by this author though!!

[Michael Dawson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Found this book to be very slow a lot of talk about relationships that got boring very quickly

[KawasakiBabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the age of 15 I read and was haunted by Audrey Rose, and have been fascinated ever since by other lives / previous lives / parallell lives.
Charley has already undergone a session of hypnosis before she and husband Tom move into a run down mill in the country.
Here, she has a powerful sense of deja-vu, and sees people who no longer exist, and causes a bit of a stir with the older members of the village comminity.
She visits a different hypnotist, and the past and present start to merge.
At this point I started to wonder how the author wouldpull off the ending - and whilst reading this sort of book, I often wonder what would happen if the hypnotist doesn't bring the subject out of the regression.
Well, it's all here, masterfully put together and skillfully concluded and I'll be looking out for more from this author.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book, Sweet Heart by Peter James started off a bit slow, but after a few pages I really got into the story.

When Charley and her husband Tom decide to buy a house in the country, they think they've found the ideal place.

Charley feels a sense of Deja Vu about the house, Elmwood Mill, but puts it down to her imagination until they actually move in when strange happenings start to occur.

Charley remembers buildings that are no longer there, the house has an unexplained out of control electricity supply, there's an overwhelming scent of musky perfume and the acrid smell of burning, just a few of the strange things going on at Elmwood Mill.

Doubting her sanity and needing to get to the bottom of it all, Charley visits a hypnotist who regresses her giving her more questions than answers.

The house holds countless terrors for her, made even worse as she deals with them on her own, her husband leaving her after being unfaithful with her best friend.

I found it hard to put this book down once I'd become immersed in the story.

[Sandra Ingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very nearly gave up on this book. I'm now glad I didn't.
Married couple, going through a bit of a tough time pack up and move from the big city to the 'picture perfect country house', hoping doing the old
'Fixer-upper' would also fix their marriage. I know, roll eyes. Add to that the fact you know there is going to be some level of creepiness involved, so the good old haunted house deal, right?
Wrong.
Well.. Sort of.
There will be no spoilers from me though. Slow starting, it wasn't until around chapter 20 that it really lured me in. Determined not to put another half read book back in my shelves, I stuck it out and was not disappointed.
Creepiness level rose quite nicely, I had a few actual out loud 'gasp' moments, which I love. A little predictable in parts but not enough to feel bored by it. Well written, an engaging and exciting page turner with quite the climatic end (loved that)
Will be keeping my eyes open for more Peter James books in the future.

[Undomiel Books · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, despite being a huge Peter James fan and being determined to finish the book, i DNF'd it after 212 pages; I gave it my best shot.
I flew through the first 100 pages, however after that it just dragged for a very long time. A lot of the description was good, but entirely unnecessary to the plot, and took up space that could have been used for character development. I felt they were rather underdeveloped, and thus I felt little connection to them.
I didn't even realise the house was supposed to be haunted and bringing up the heroine's past life; I felt this link was poorly executed, and I only realised this when reading other people's reviews.
Overall I thought the book had a great concept and I did think the beginning was well done, however after this I lost interest, and unfortunately couldn't carry on. That being said I am still a huge Peter James fan, and will continue to read his other work!

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first non crime book of Peter James that I have read and it was very good. A subtle horror/past lives tale with a likeable principal character. It was an Amityville type tale of a house with supernatural issues combined with the more subtle psychological experience of someone reliving a past life. The plot was very convincing and not far fetched but what let it down was the rushed ending, the pace at the end felt like it was out of place with the rest of the tale. Notwithstanding this it was in many ways better than a true blood and guts James Herbert style horror, and I wish Peter James could carry on with this genre as well as the more popular Grace series, he seems to have forsaken the supernatural nowadays. Well worth a read.

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are a fan of the supernatural and are willing to suspend disbelief, you will enjoy this book. If, however, you prefer a little realism in your books, then this book is not for you. The main character, Charley, is unable to conceive and gets it into her head that this could be due to some trauma in a past life. So she starts having regression therapy and, lo and behold, she had some massive trauma in her past life, when she was her mother! Then the supernatural world starts to overlap the real world as almost every other character in the book gets bumped off. The book ends suddenly with no explanation of husband Tom's absence. All very silly, and I wouldn't rush to read this book if I were you.

[Daisy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Firstly there were some positives, one being I felt there was more character investment and better dialogue than in many of the author’s later Grace books. I also loved the subject matter, particularly regression. Like the author I have a huge interest in the paranormal.

However, my praise stops there - the sex scenes were gross; regressing one’s own conception really is not something that ever needs to be read, especially in such graphic detail. Why do horror writers constantly have to throw sex scenes into their books? There was much to like but I had to cut a star rating there because that really was a bridge too far to say the least. There’s also quite a bit of animal distress so that was another markdown from me.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Peter James' writing, almost always, so I really wanted to like this and there were lots of good things about it; the writing swept you along and was as descriptive and flowing as usual. The characters were pretty well fleshed out and there were goodies and baddies and not always the ones you would expect. However I found the plot ridiculous, sort of Stephen King-ish but not as well rounded. I'm just too sceptical and found it difficult to know what was really happening and what was a delusion. I also felt like a lady trying to have children would recognise when she had obvious symptoms of pregnancy. I definitely prefer Peter's later work.

[Plum-crazy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I adore Peter James' Roy Grace series & can find no fault with them but his horror books for me are a bit of a mixed bag. This story was very much the same as both "Possession" & "Dreamer" so not particularly original, but having said that I much preferred this one. It could be a tad predictable in parts & sadly the epilogue lacked the twisted humour that so amused me in"Prophecy" & "Twilight".

This all probably sounds like I wasn't very impressed - au contraire! It kept me entertained throughout & was a good read - I've just come to expect so much from the poor chap! :o)

[Mark Woolf · Rating 2 out of 5]

If Peter James was writing this tongue in cheek it's worth 2 stars for sheer chutzpah and inventiveness. But it loses a star if he was making an attempt to write a seriously scary horror story. It starts promisingly enough, but as it progresses the reader is asked to suspend any hope of clinging onto realism. It becomes jumbled and pointless despite James' attempt to root the kind of regression therapy described in accepted science.

Have read many of James' later police procedural novels, I'm glad he eventually found his niche after what I consider to be a very unpromising early attempt at a psychic thriller.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story centers around Charley as she and her husband move to the countryside into a fixer upper to start a family. At the advice of a friend she undergoes regressive hypnosis and starts to relive traumatic events from a “past life”.

This is definitely a slow burn. It takes almost half the book before it starts to ramp up. However the end had amazing suspense that kept me riveted.

My biggest issue is the gruesome animal violence in this book. I don’t think 3 dogs needed to die violent deaths. Plus I wasn’t a big fan of how any of the female characters were written.

Overall an interesting story but I don’t think it’s one I’d read again.

[Mary Newcomer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a real page turner, but it was written 30 years ago and I could feel how our society has
evolved in that time. I think people want to know more about their past if they are adopted and
things are more out in the open.
Consequently, the heroine got on my nerves at times. I just wanted her to be a bit more aware and
with it. Nevertheless, I gobbled up the book in record time because there is a lot of suspense, never
knew a ghost could be so vicious! Good reading for around Halloween and fall evenings with a lot
of atmosphere!

[Andy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointed. I have read all the "Grace / Dead" books and loved them. Looked for a holiday read and thought I'd give this a go, even though I am not overly interested in the supernatural (that should have told me not to bother). Anyway, an easy read but it didn't do anything for me I'm afraid - I was not overly involved nor did I feel any tension.