Reviewed by Ephantus Gold
Some novels creep up on you like a drizzle turning into a downpour—you think you are relaxing into something light and warm, only to be carried away by something deeper, weirder, and more captivating than you imagined. “The Dead Come to Stay” by Brandy Schillace is exactly that kind of book. It charms you with an eccentric village, a bumbling house guest, and a heroine who nervously over-offers tea and cookies, then ambushes you with murder, legacy, and emotional resonance that lingers long after the last page. Purchase Here.
At the center is Jo Jones, a neurodivergent American editor trying to rebuild her life in a crumbling Yorkshire cottage she inherited under strange, silent circumstances. When she rents out her attic suite to a rain-soaked, vaguely suspicious man named Ronan Foley, she expects a quiet transaction. Instead, the next morning he’s found dead in a muddy ditch—his red shirt soaked, his backstory missing. Jo, still recovering from the previous year’s trauma (a burned-down ancestral manor, a hidden skeleton, a mystery with roots in her own family line), is thrust once again into the heart of a murder investigation.
But this is no standard mystery but a gripping plot that wind between old secrets and fresh wounds, as Jo navigates both her personal history and her present circumstances with remarkable insight, awkward charm, and a steadfast refusal to conform. Alongside her is MacAdams, a gruff, skeptical, quietly loyal detective whose push-and-pull rapport with Jo lends the story both tension and tenderness. As the investigation unfolds, layers of Jo’s own past resurface, revealing how closely the dead come to stay, not just in places, but in people.
Schillace’s writing is gently lyrical, often funny, and deeply interior. The real power here isn’t just in whodunit mechanics—though the mystery is well-paced and satisfying—it’s in how vividly the characters live and breathe on the page. Jo’s voice is the heartbeat of the novel: sharp and observant, filled with tangents and literary asides, and prone to delightful over explanations that somehow make her more endearing, not less.
Here’s one of my favorite early moments that perfectly captures the book’s voice:
“Maybe it was the fact that Jo had forgotten to call them tea biscuits, or maybe it had to do with the fact she wasn’t taking breaths between sentences, but the startled pigeon suddenly began to . . . laugh. It worked a change in him, shaking all the stiffness out.”
That’s the tone in a nutshell- awkward, tender, and unexpectedly transformative. You come for the mystery, but you stay for the protagonist—her intellect, her emotional honesty, her complicated, beautiful mind.
If you love your mysteries thoughtful, character-driven, and tinged with bittersweet humor, “The Dead Come to Stay” by Brandy Schillace is more than worth a visit. It’s the kind of book that leaves a faint, haunting echo—like a footprint in damp earth, or a cup of tea gone cold beside an unanswered question.