About the Book:

The chill intensified, and Archer opened his eyes to see the candles extinguish one by one …

PSI – Paranormal Surveyance Ireland – are in deep water. When the operators of a luxury cruise ship ask for their help with a series of unexplainable events, Raven and the team are hopeful that this case, for once, won’t endanger their lives.

As they try to blend in with the wealthy passengers, it quickly becomes clear to Davis, Fionn and the others that there is more lurking in the shadows than they’ve realised. With the eerie encounters escalating and rising tensions threatening to tear the team apart, time is running out for PSI. Can they save the ship – and themselves – before it’s too late?

Find this book on Goodreads here. Find on Bookshop.org UK here (affiliate link). Find more information about the book here (publisher’s website).

About the Author:

Amy is a writer from Dublin, Ireland. Her non-fiction writing is often on the theme of chronic illness and identity, and has been featured in Sonder Literary Magazine, Rogue, and Dear Damsels. What Walks These Halls was her debut novel. It was shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Teen & Young Adult Book of the Year 2023 and nominated for the Yoto Carnegies 2023. Her second novel, Who Watches This Place, was published in 2024.

She can generally be found by the sea, drinking coffee, talking about her dog or asking people what their favourite ghost story is.

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Interview:

Are there any reported hauntings in real life that have inspired a PSI investigation or any that you want to use in future PSI investigations? Have you had any spooky encounters? 

For Where The Shadows Hide I did a lot of research into haunted ships, and the stories about the Queen Mary were definitely a big inspiration for L’Imperiale. I’ve also somehow ended up on Appalachian Mountain TikTok, and the folklore around there is something I’d love to draw on in future books – especially the idea of mimics, entities that imitate other people in the house’s voices or appear looking like them. There’s something so eerie about that to me. I haven’t had any experiences myself, but my favourite thing is when other people tell me their own stories. 

What is it about ghost stories that keep us coming back to them, despite the horror and terror that come with them?

I think ghost stories are a safe way to explore fear. We know we can shut the book, or turn off the tv, if it gets too much. For me, ghost stories have always been an exploration of the unknown, of the uncanny, and they’re a way for us to explore the things that scare us in a way that feels safe and controllable for the reader/watcher/listener. 

The paranormal in Where The Shadows Hide have a different motive to the previous books. What prompted you to explore this and the wider societal topics it feeds into?

I always want the ghosts in my books to feel real, so that even if the reader doesn’t agree with their actions they can understand how they got to a place where they would do these things. I watched a lot of Below Deck as research and I was both fascinated and horrified by the attitudes and entitlement so many of the guests had, and I knew I wanted to explore that world in the book. Then, when I was creating the paranormal in WTSH I just kept asking myself questions: why would they do this, what would motivate them, and pulled on that thread until it led me deeper into the societal issues that come up in the book.

Every single one of the characters carry trauma, how important was it for you to explore how each of them experience that trauma?

It was incredibly important. Something I was really aware of is that I didn’t want the issues and experiences they had in previous books to just magically disappear. I wanted the ripple effect of everything they’d been through–both before the series began and during their investigations–to very much still linger. There’s no one way for trauma to present itself, and I really wanted to show that through the different ways the team react to their experiences. Some of them lash out, some close off, others deflect; they all react in different ways and I wanted to explore that so that there wasn’t just one depiction of how trauma can impact people. 

The characters have evolved so much over the course of the three books, with Raven perhaps being the most obviously changed and what it means for her relationships. Did you suspect they’d go on such transformative journeys when you began the series? Have any of them surprised you with the direction of their growth?

I definitely did with Raven. From book one (What Walks These Halls) I knew I wanted to show her on that journey towards bringing her walls down and letting people back into her life. She carried so much guilt around what happened in Hyacinth House that she thought she needed to isolate herself from the people who care about her, so showing her slowly soften the spiky parts of herself and relearn how to open up to people she cares about was a journey I really wanted to see her go on. I think Fionn surprised me a bit – he’s branching out on his own and I’ve loved seeing him grow in confidence and express himself a bit more. He’s a character that hides behind humour a lot, so those moments where he talks openly and earnestly about his emotions feel really powerful to me.

We loved how there was no magic cure, or energy replacement for Eabha. Why did you choose to include such good chronic illness rep and how important do you think it is to have this representation in YA?

I developed ME when I was twenty-five, and it has impacted my life in so many ways. I always knew I wanted to write that representation at some point and it flowed naturally into Éabha’s storyline after the events of Who Watches This Place. I think I was finally emotionally ready to write about it too. It was incredibly cathartic, as well as phenomenally vulnerable, but it was extremely important to me to write a hopeful but realistic outcome for her. 

There are a lot of young people out there with chronic conditions, and I want them to get to feel seen in books too. I want to give them representation that doesn’t shy away from how difficult it is, but also shows that chronic illness is a part of you, not all of you, and there are ways to still live your life and follow your dreams while managing it. I don’t like the ‘magical cure’ in fiction; it’s not realistic, and I always feel deflated when it’s used, because it’s just incredibly unrelatable. I have a – at this point in time –chronic condition with no cure, and I’m far more interested in reading about characters doing exciting things despite having to adjust how they go about doing those things, than characters who just magically get better. It feels more true to me. I also think I’ve learned so much about identities and issues from reading about them in books, I want to contribute to that too. So, when someone reads this book, I hope a chronically ill reader might feel seen, or a typically healthy reader might learn a bit about chronic illness. This book obviously only shows one experience and one depiction of chronic illness, but my hope is that if people keep writing about these topics eventually we’ll have a wide canon of different chronic illness experiences.

Each book, along with a new haunting, we get new supporting characters like Cordelia, Audrey, and Charles alongside the main PSI cast. Who’s been the most surprising character for you?

I did not expect Jack Gallagher, the Youtuber from What Walks These Halls, to become a recurring supporting character, but he completely surprised me. I really love him; he’s utterly chaotic and on the surface would be utterly infuriating but when he shows flashes of vulnerability and his authentic self you can see how he and Raven have ended up in the most unlikely of friendships.

Please can you recommend a UKYA read you think readers will also love?

I love Songs for Ghosts* by Clara Kumagai, and I think anyone looking for a stunning ghost story that weaves dual storylines and explores identity and love while drawing on Japanese history and folklore will too.

Thank you, Amy!

*Affiliate link