The Haunting of Avis Lovelock - M.K. Hardy - ★★.¼

AUTHOR: M.K. Hardy

GENRE: Historical Mystery

PUBLICATION DATE: August 27, 2026

RATING: 2.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A historical mystery with mild paranormal and Sapphic undertones. Slowburn. A good plotline with several novelties but its potential isn't fully realised. Interesting lead character who saves an otherwise average execution.

Plot Preview:

Avis Lovelock is a professional sceptic who loves to debunk spirit mediums and psychics while they are fleecing their customers. An American businessman named Carlton Brooksbank invites Avis aboard the Excambion where her task is to prove that the ocean liner, despite what many claim, isn't haunted. As Avis begins her investigations, she discovers that the passengers include famous twin spiritualists Gideon and Rachel Duquesne. Now Avis has to ensure that they don’t capitalise on the paranormal rumours while she, Avis, gets a chance to disprove both the rumours and the twins.

The story comes to us in the third-person perspective of Avis.

Bookish Yays:

🚢 The concept. Having a professional sceptic and a spiritualist as adversaries while both are trying to decipher the same mystery is clever.

🚢 Avis. Loved her gumption and the contradictions in her character. Her struggles to accept the supernatural occurrences that are in conflict with her beliefs come across convincingly. Avis singlehandedly carries the book even though she’s not always likeable.

🚢 The setting of the ocean liner, with various parts of the vessel used well to enhance the mystery.

Bookish Okays:

⚓ Rachel. A character with so much potential but somehow, her role seems side-lined. I’d have loved to see her sharing the narrative perspective with Avis.

Bookish Nays:

🌊 The limited number of characters despite the setting being an ocean liner. There was much potential to add suspects and suspicious activity, but most of the secondary characters are forgotten after a point.

🌊 The slowburn pacing, whether in terms of the mystery or the romance. Tested my patience.

🌊 The Sapphic love track. Not only was the romance too slow to bloom but I also didn’t find the pairing convincing. It also felt like more focus was given to the Avis-Rachel connection than to the actual mystery.

🌊 The paranormal content. Great potential but the execution was too bland. I expected more atmosphere from the haunted Victorian setting but it was quite lacklustre.

🌊 The use of Avis’ third-person POV. This meant that for most of the truly atmospheric moments, we got an indirect narration of what happened instead of experiencing it directly through the characters. It further diluted the mystery.

🌊 The reveal behind the mystery. Not too convincing to me.

🎧 The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at 11hrs 15 mins, is narrated by Emily Mount. She speaks quite fast, so even 1.2x felt like a rushed speed to me. But other than this, I had no issues with her narration. She has a soft mellifluous voice (not a voice I would associate with Avis but she makes it work) and great enunciation. The audiobook is a great way of trying out this story.

Overall, while I appreciated the contrast of beliefs presented by Avis and Rachel, the mystery itself didn’t impress me much. Those who like romance subplots might like the slowburn love more than I did, but as I had picked this up for the mystery, I was somewhat disappointed. Avis as a character and Excambion as a setting were the two main positives of the book for me.

Perhaps if you go into the book with different expectations, you might like it better. It works more as a historical fiction with a Sapphic enemies-to-lovers subplot than as a horror or Gothic-style mystery. If you pick up the book,. I hope you like it more than I did.

My thanks to Rebellion and Solaris for providing the DRC and to Recorded Books for providing the ALC of “The Haunting of Avis Lovelock”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.