Berkley Street, by Ron Ripley, was a book published in 2016 that really captivated my interest. It is one of the most suspenseful and thrilling books that I’ve ever read and it was a book that I remember fondly.
The book is about a young man named Shane Ryan who’s back in his hometown of Nashua after winning a court case with his uncle Rick and his Aunt Rita over possession of his parents’ home, 125 Berkeley Street. The case began twenty years back when his parents, Hank and Fiona Ryan, had first disappeared without a trace within the confined walls of that house and was blamed by his uncle and aunt.
Shane had moved into this house with his parents when he was a kid and soon after did the madness begin. Shane started to experience strange incidents such as rotting smells, heaviness in the air, and whispers in the walls. At first, Shane thought it was only him who was feeling the effects of living in that house, until he started to notice a difference in his parents appearance including under eye bags, pale skin, and sunken-in cheeks. His parents didn’t want to believe that there could be things such as ghosts and spirits, but were forced to due to the undeniable evidence.
Throughout the book the character goes from his present self to his past self trying to remember and unfold anything that could help him find his parents. He uncovers various stories about the ghost present in the house and even befriends some of them who will eventually try to help him.
About the author: Ron Ripley is a husband, father, and an Amazon best seller when it comes to his books being in the top 40’s for the category of horror. Ripley has lived in New England for most of his life and used to scare himself to death at night when he was a kid because of how close he lived to a nearby cemetery. Ripley loves to involve military history and horror fiction as much as possible within most of his books and in the 1st book Berkeley Street (which is a series) he does just that.
I’d rate this book 8.5/10 because it constantly had me on my toes. It wasn’t a book that was overly scary or even extremely boring, but it had a balance of horror and mystery that used the story phenomenally well, and I can’t wait to read the others.
