By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
This review is also on Reedsy Discovery
Spoilers: Justin Hughes’s potentially supernatural horror novel Saffron is not overly scary so much as it is eerie and ominous. It concerns a situation that could be supernatural or psychological. We are encountering a protagonist who is either seeing ghosts or losing his sanity.
Toby, a British boarding school going teen, suffered tremendous loss and is depressed. He sees a strange saffron figure in the distance. As the figure gets closer, Toby thinks that this figure is stalking him. However his friends and family don't see anything and wonder if he is heading towards a psychotic break.
This book depends on a sense of eeriness in an unknown situation not so much with ghosts or other creatures that are upfront with a history. The figure is the main horror in the novel. It begins gradually and grows into an overwhelming presence in Toby's life.
The book alternates between Toby's point of view and those of other characters. Some of the creepiest chapters are the ones told by Toby's friends. They see their friend looking in a specific direction and yell at something to keep away from him or suddenly quake with fear.
When they ask him what's wrong, he doesn't tell them for fear that they think that he is going crazy (though he is running that risk anyway). His friends can't help because they can't see or hear anything. Is Toby losing his mind?
In their defense, Toby has suffered from emotional turmoil. His father and brother died and he, his mother, and sister are having a difficult time coping. In fact, Toby prefers to be at school than at home.
He also has difficulties at school and with his classmates. Besides their concerns about Toby's sanity, there are several love shapes going on. A female friend of Toby’s has a crush on him, while he has a crush on another female friend, who is dating a boy, who is also attracted to an older guy.
All of these relationships hover around Toby’s spectral encounters which increases his emotional instability and inability to confide in his friends and family about what's happening making him lonelier than ever.
What is haunting Toby isn't just this spectral figure. What is haunting him are the emotions that he feels and is unable to express: loneliness, isolation, alienation, anxiety, grief. The feelings that one gets when they are surrounded by people and yet feel like they are the last person on Earth. He is isolated not just by this figure but by himself.
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