This was the first book I've read by Susan Hill, and I liked it well enough to try another of her books. It was a quick read, a solid ghost story written in the style of a Victorian gothic (although set in the 1920s or 1930s), complete with characters wasting away physically from the horrors of what they've seen. The ghost story is not particularly surprising, but Hill creates a good atmosphere. Interestingly, the most horrifying part of the story takes up just a page or so.

The movie terrified me but I found the book a "pleasantly" haunting tale.

I wasn't scared exactly, but there were moments of shivers up the back of my neck when I was reading The Woman in Black. I've seen the film but I'd never got around to reading the book, and now that the film is far enough behind me not to remember much about it, it was fun to read this. Arthur, a young solicitor travels to a remote coastal village in the marshes to attend the funeral and tie up the paperwork of one of his firm's clients. During the funeral he sees a woman in black, and later when he has to visit Eel Marsh house, the dead woman's home, he sees her again, and worse. It's in the gothic tradition, although published in 1989, and Hill does this very well. I kind of saw the end coming, but guessing at it was also some kind of enjoyment.

I enjoyed the ghost story and the build up of suspense. That ending hurt my heart.

Ooooh a good kind of creepy!

I'm a big fan of gothic fiction and heard about this book for a long time, so I finally read it. I was surprised to find that I was very disappointed in this book. It had a lot of promise, but did not deliver.

Main issue: The author spends way too much time describing "boring" things like the weather. In almost every single chapter, the author drones on and on about the weather that day, or normal mundane things the narrator must do, like find something to eat or drink etc. It just made no sense. It's a ghost story, we want to hear about the ghosts!

I finished the book but it was incredibly boring up until the 70-80% point. From that point onward, it seemed to get on with the story. I understand the author probably wants to establish a bleak or gloomy atmosphere with the weather and exposition etc but this was way too much.

The main character/narrator is also not likable. He just seems like a typical, somewhat boring person, and the book lingers too much on his boring day to day thoughts instead of any action happening.

This is already a short book and I felt like it needed to be at least half the size it actually was.
Other than that, the elements of gothic suspense/horror were there, and I appreciated the author's use of prose reminiscent of that era. Overall though I would not recommend this book to others.