Bellamy by Darcy Coates – Book Review

There was something wrong with Bellamy. [Leanne] had been running from it for most of her life. It had brought her home, though.  Perhaps it had always intended to. Perhaps no one ever truly escaped the building."

Bellamy is a creepy short story by author Darcy Coates. I think I downloaded this book when the author offered it for free for a limited time for newsletter subscribers. And I'm glad I downloaded it.

The story opens with Leanne who has returned to the orphanage where she and her brother were placed nearly 30 years prior. We later learn that her brother disappeared from the orphanage and was never found.

"The exterior was flat and grim, more like a warehouse than a home." – This is the first description the reader gets of Bellamy.

Bellamy is narrated in the third person but it's clear that the main view point is Leanne's, who has been struggling to forget about this so-called home. The reader quickly notices that Leanne wants no connection with the home, whereas the 'home' wants Leanne. It's as if she escaped when she shouldn't have.

"Thirty years should have been long enough to forget the home. Thirty years should have been long enough for the dreams to stop."

As the story progresses, Leanne goes back inside the run-down orphanage. However, there was a purpose to Leanne's visit; "she wasn't there just to call up old memories."

Both through memory and flashback, we're told that children were disappearing in Bellamy. I liked how Darcy Coates interweaved Leanne's memories into the story, giving the reader the perfect background about events that happened 30 years prior to the story being told.

When Leanne enters the once-upon-a-time home, she also enters the places she wasn't allowed to explore as a child and there Bellamy's secret or rather secrets are slowly revealed.

Bellamy scared me and I loved it! There were lots of twists that kept me on edge and that had me read the book/story in one sitting. I can probably read this novella over and over.

Overall rating for Bellamy: 5 stars

Add Bellamy by Darcy Coates on Goodreads.

Note: I originally meant to publish this book review October, aka my month of Halloween but the month flew by and obviously I didn't publish the review.

Update: Bellamy by Darcy Coates has made it to Nadaness In Motion's Top Books of 2019.