To Break a Covenant is a gripping paranormal horror/thriller novel written by Alison Ames and published in late 2021 about a small, supposedly haunted mining town called Moon Basin that was evacuated due to coal fires. This book explores themes of friendship, sacrifice, and the lengths people are willing to go to for those they love. This book has very deep world-building and intricate character arcs, and the story and writing style had me engrossed in the book from the first to the last page.
The main character, Clem, and her best friend, Nina, have lived in the New Moon Basin for as long as they could remember. However, they opened their friend circle for two new girls: Lisey, who has a weird knack for training and befriending crows, and Piper, who just moved to Moon Basin after her dad got a job working in the mine. The girls took an opportunity to go with Piper’s dad to experience the mine for the first time and were immediately unsettled by the atmosphere, and Clem notices that she can’t shake the feeling that something is horribly wrong with the place.
After her dad makes many trips to the mine, Piper starts to notice something weird going on with him; every time he comes home, he’s been acting strange. Sleepwalking, night terrors, the dirt of the mine clinging onto him, and most of all, he has an inexplicable obsession with the mine that’s anything but healthy or normal. No matter how many ghost-hunting squads went down in the depths, nobody can explain the things going on in the town. Now, Clem, Nina, Lisey, and Piper have no choice but to enter the mine themselves to save New Basin and Piper’s dad.
Some of the characters in this story are the main character, Clem, a girl who’s lived in New Basin for her whole life and might want to be more than just best friends with Nina, the skeptic who thinks the whole buzz about the haunted mine is false; Lisey is a mysterious girl who loves to feed and befriend with the crows who inhabit the New Basin; Piper, the new girl in town; and her father, an engineer put in charge of stabilizing the mine. The four friends are very tightly knit and would do anything for one another, especially when it comes to trying to save Piper’s father and each other from the mine’s clutches.
This book has a very interesting writing style that holds a great mystery, leaving the readers in the dark and seamlessly blurring the line between reality and fantasy, keeping them hooked, and wanting to find out more. The writing style is packed with vivid descriptions of gore and body parts, making the story a terrifying read. To Break a Covenant is the only horror book I’ve ever read that made me genuinely uneasy. All the characters are developed in a way that feels very real, elevating the realness of the protagonists and the novel as a whole and making the gore even more horrifying, because it feels more real. The building tension and the feeling of dread throughout the book make for a very well-constructed plot that perfectly sets up a surprisingly bittersweet ending to a bone-chilling story.
To conclude, To Break a Covenant is my favorite horror/thriller novel I’ve ever picked up off the bookstore shelves, and both its writing, mystery, and plot sucked me into the pages and I couldn’t put the book down. I highly recommend reading this too if you like vivid horror novels, and I know you won’t be disappointed!
