Book Review: The Sight by Melanie Golding

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

The Sight by Melanie Golding

Mogsy’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books (September 5, 2023)

Length: 272 pages

Author Information: Website

This is my third novel by Melanie Golding, and once more I was not disappointed by the captivating storytelling and creepy vibes. The Sight follows trick rider Faith Harrington, who has the power to foresee a person’s death. It first manifested when she was just a child, wintering with her family of circus performers on a farm over a frozen lake, when a dream suddenly came to her foretelling her brother’s drowning. Ever since that day, simply looking into someone else’s eyes will bring on a vision of how they will die. Faith’s helplessness to do anything to prevent these deaths is what ultimately drove her to try and blind herself by stabbing out her left eye.

Circus folk being the superstitious bunch they are, however, at first they tried to keep Faith out of the family business, and only after a promise from Faith herself to never use her gift did her Uncle Billy eventually allow her back in the ring. Gradually though, even those closest to her began to fear her and pull away, and then one night, disaster strikes in the middle of a show, and Faith is compelled to break her promise as a favor for a dear friend. Had that been the extent of it, all might have been forgiven, but soon afterwards, Faith is caught using her gift again, this time with the entire incident caught on camera, sealing her fate. Uncle Billy is left with no choice but to cast Faith out of her beloved circus and the only life she has ever known.

This banishment ends up setting in motion a series of events that leads to more hardship for Faith, now adrift in a world without support, with a mother whose end-of-life care is racking up some serious expenses. But our protagonist is resourceful and determined, using her ability to her advantage in a truly enterprising manner, selling her gift as a service—until one day, a look into a client’s eyes revealed herself as the killer in her vision of his future murder.

Up until this point, the novel had been a slow build-up of tension and suspense, alternating between the present and flashbacks which served to fill in the gaps in our main character’s backstory. However, as Faith’s journey takes an unexpected turn with the revelation of seeing herself in a vision of a stranger’s death, that was a truly WTF! moment, injecting a fresh jolt of momentum and shifting the narrative abruptly from slow-burn into edge-of-your-seat territory.

At the heart of it, The Sight is a depressing, tragic tale as well. Faith’s life has been marred by death, death, and more death. In a bold move, the author does not shy away from the emotional burden her protagonist carries, incorporating her trauma into creating a heavy, haunting atmosphere. In turn, Faith’s portrait is a picture of a woman who has faced one trial after another, but these experiences have also sculpted her character into one of remarkable depth.

Through all the darkness though, there is some light. While it feels a bit wrong to admit this, I did find some amusement in Faith exploiting her gift by advertising herself as an “Oracle of Death,” and it says a lot about our society that I find it completely believable that some would pay huge sums of money for the services she can provide. In the end, there is also a ray of hope and optimism—that is, right before it is dashed by the parting shot of a last-minute twist.

But that is the game you play when you pick up a Melanie Golding book. You enter a world where the ordinary and the paranormal coexist, and where the line between horror and thriller blurs. The Sight was another great read, showcasing her talent for writing eerie and emotionally charged stories.