Morgan never believed her father killed her mother. She spent the last six years of her life actively campaigning for his release, which eventually resulted in a mistrial ruling and his subsequent release. This is where The Folly (2023) by Gemma Amor begins, with the forty-something Morgan taking her father back into her daily life. However, campaigning costs have left her somewhat impoverished, and, in true gothic fashion, they move into an isolated folly on the Cornish coast.

A folly, for those uninitiated, is a pointless piece of architecture. It’s a grand building made by rich folk out of ideas of what to do with their cash, typically on the edges of large estates. The folly in this book is a tower, (“decorative, brooding, and yet wholly frivolous”) that looks out to sea and has something of a dark history, thanks to a local writer jumping from its height, just as a woman did in one of her books.

Amor’s story is relaxed and engaging as it builds, showing the awkward relationship between a daughter rediscovering her father and a man shrunken by the state. It’s a great dynamic, believable and it nicely unravels as time passes. Her dogged belief in his innocence is tested as details emerge that former trials had failed to uncover. The first fifty pages that lead them to the titular folly are great.

But this is a darker tale than just a slim family drama, and the book prematurely jumps into another type of folly: the folie à deux. No sooner have they moved into the tower, do strange things start happening. A mysterious light comes by; a stranger visits with an unusual but familiar voice. Morgan, as narrator, is unreliable and we are never sure whether what she recounts is real, imagined, or, as per the folie à deux, shared.

There’s much to like with The Folly. Amor’s writing captures the lonely coast, and brings in its sights, scents, and sounds. However, she seems to be rushing somewhere. What starts as a measured, character-driven piece that takes its time soon becomes an unrewarding reveal that is too on-the-nose and unearned. The ending is nicely ambiguous, but there’s a sense that whatever daddy issues are being worked out are so far inconclusive.