Review - The Cold House by AG Slatter

The Cold House

AG Slatter
Titan Books, 7 October 2025
Available as: HB, 160pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781835412541

I'm grateful to the publisher for  giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Cold House to consider for review.

Though set in modern Britain rather than her fantasy Sourdough world, in The Cold House Slatter explores similar themes to her recent fantasy novels - here we meet a woman left somewhat alone and struggling to understand her place in the wider world. Everly'd had her share of tragedy. there is a mystery about her early life which Slatter only gradually shares, and more recently, she's lost a husband and child. When we meet Everly at the beginning of the story, she reached the "attacking strangers in supermarkets" stage of grieving, something which rather shakes her out of herself and forces her to seek help.

Though the help proves to be a recommendation to get away from it all by spending a few days at an isolated, spooky house on a remote island. That leads Everly into a somewhat folk horror chain of events which moves quickly from the charming and quaint to the downright terrifying. As we learn how she handled those earlier, terrifying events in her life, the question looms: does that make her a survivor, or a betrayer? Will she be able to summon the strength to push through, or will things, this time, just be too much?

The Cold House is a cracking read, a short book but one with terrific pace. Slatter is perfect at judging what her readers need in the book, and where gaps will be filled in. That means we don't get reams of back information about Everly's harrowing earlier years, for example, or about the history of YYY Manor, just essential nuggets which are really quite enough. But there is a beautifully told account of Everly's very real distress and sense of dislocation at the start of the book (if "beautiful" is an appropriate word for a portrayal of such distress; I couldn't find a more apt one). 

The pace also feels natural, I think, as the book moves from an initial paralysing situation to exploration to that to a real, pounding, action-y conclusion as Everly's forced to fight for her own identity - and to choose who, and what, she will trust. Her quick decisions will result in lasting consequences and we have to hope that those will be results that she can live with. I felt that the ending contained a delicious ambiguity here, and wondered if things were, indeed, over? I suppose time will tell!

I'd strongly recommend The Cold House, if you haven't read any of Slatter's stuff before this standalone would be a good place to take the temperature, as it were.

For more information about The Cold House, see the publisher's website here.