Today’s blog tour is for a gothic treat of a book!
Thanks to Claire Maxwell and Tinder Press for my place on the tour and for the book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are always my own.
Now, I’m a huge fan of ghostly, eerie, creepy stories – I may be extremely cynical in real life, but I do like my fiction filled with psychological spookiness!
This story focuses on Chloe, a young woman who has booked an unused church nestled in Suffolk’s Mockbeggar Woods for her wedding to Sam, a local. As Chloe arrives to prepare for her marriage, it becomes evident that the villagers are keeping secrets about the woods…secrets surrounding Small Angels church and the events of many years previously. As the church is opened once again, it seems that the woods are regaining power and the past will need to be confronted.
What I really liked about the book is that it feels oddly timeless. Although Chloe and Sam’s strand of the plot is modern, the majority of the story feels like it could happen at any time. This is a tale of folk stories, ancient woodland, rituals, family history and living memory – and I really enjoyed the way that the different stories wound together and echoed through the later events.
Of all the characters in the book, I found Lucia the most engaging. One of four sisters raised at Blanch Farm, she is the one who is closest to the village’s disturbing history and the one prepared to venture deepest into Mockbeggar Woods. Indeed, I thought that the family dynamic of the Gonnes – Lucia, her sisters, their grandparents – was vividly imagined and realistic. Here are the sibling squabbles, the negotiating of the family hierarchy, the laying down of family rules and the keeping of traditions; the scenes at Blanch Farm were, for me, the most intriguing and I loved that the place itself took on different significance as the story progressed.
Mockbeggar Woods is also central to the story and Owen has created a place that is at once mesmerising and intoxicating, but also sinister and dangerous. The woods are feared by most, but like an addictive drug to others – and the beauty of the woodland conceals its perilous nature. The woods seem to have a life of their own – a dark and shadowy character within the history of the village and an intrinsic part of the villagers’ stories. All very gothic!
The novel is cleverly plotted so that themes run through the various stories, for example an outsider child, storytelling, actions of revenge, notions of memory and memorial. Love is also an important theme and I enjoyed that Chloe and Sam’s heterosexual marriage wasn’t the only love story in evidence.
I’d recommend this to readers who enjoy clever and thought-provoking novels with a dark heart – think along the lines of Laura Purcell, Rhiannon Ward or Sarah Waters at her most eerie. There’s lots to enjoy here for fans of psychological horror and ghost stories, but also for readers intrigued about a modern gothic story – Owen uses and adapts the conventions of the genre well. Even those of us cynical about ghosts will find something to like!
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