Blurb

1886, BANNIN BAY, AUSTRALIA.

The Brightwell family has sailed from England to make their new home in Western Australia. Ten-year-old Eliza knows little of what awaits them on these shores beyond shining pearls and shells like soup plates – the things her father has promised will make their fortune.

Ten years later and Charles Brightwell, now the bay’s most prolific pearler, goes missing from his ship while out at sea. Whispers from the townsfolk suggest mutiny and murder, but headstrong Eliza, convinced there is more to the story, refuses to believe her father is dead, and it falls to her to ask the questions no one else dares consider.

But in a town teeming with corruption, prejudice and blackmail, Eliza soon learns that the truth can cost more than pearls, and she must decide just how much she is willing to pay – and how far she is willing to go – to find it . . .

Review

Huge thanks to Mantle for sending me a proof copy of this beautiful book in exchange for an honest review.

Every now and then, a book comes along that ticks every single one of the boxes. Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter is exactly the sort of novel I adore, and I’m afraid this review will pretty much be a love letter to the perfect book! As a reader, it left me with that hugely satisfying feeling of getting everything I wanted. As a writer, it made me swoon with envy as Pook pulls off absolutely everything I’d love to achieve with my own first novel.

The setting is original, immersive and vividly described. Bannin Bay comes to life as a character in its own right, and the story is absolutely infused with its sweltering heat, the salty stink of the sea, the bush glowering behind the town. The sensory detail is almost overwhelming – I could see and feel and smell everything that Pook describes, and pausing during my reading (which I didn’t do often!) felt like waking up from the most vivid of dreams.

Eliza is a wonderful protagonist. I was completely invested in her story, with her every step of the way, admiring her courage, fearing for the dangers her stubbornness would lead her into – she is so fully realised, I did the thing of sometimes warning her out loud: “Not sure that’s a good idea, Eliza!” – but she didn’t listen to me! I want a film version of this book so badly, but I’d also be terrified that it wouldn’t match up to the novel. It is rare for a novel to feel quite so visual, so razor-sharp in its descriptive power – Pook works a special kind of narrative magic here, and it left me in awe.

The story zips along, full of intrigue and twists and turns, but always convincing. There are times when the lens is taken off Eliza, and I enjoyed these moments – they contain some really beautiful writing – although I was always glad to rejoin her on her adventures. The novel builds to an incredibly dramatic crescendo (no spoilers here, don’t worry) and ends in a way that I found completely satisfying. I can’t write intelligently about this book because I had such a strong emotional reaction to it – all I can do is urge you to read it! I’ve pre-ordered the beautiful hardback and can’t wait for it to arrive next year – this book is going on my forever shelf.

Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter by Lizzie Pook will be published by Mantle in March 2022, and is available to pre-order here.

Blurb

Human Terrain. The Army acknowledges, through the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, that human geography is as important as any satellite map.

Human Terrain deals with female voices and working-class existences, ordinary lives transformed by loss and love. There’s the mother working as cutman for her daughter in the boxing ring; the family who find themselves abandoned at the seaside; the gardener digging for love among the grass cuttings and weeds. Characters standing in a classroom, drinking in a pub, working the fryer in a fish and chip shop, or finding love in an ice warehouse, they all inhabit the collection. Stories full of dark humour and deep tenderness that depict the characters’ struggles to understand their place in the world.

Review

I read and reviewed Emily Bullock’s second novel, Inside The Beautiful Inside last year, and it was one of my top reads of 2020, so I was thrilled when the lovely people of Reflex Press offered to send me a copy of her new short story collection in exchange for an honest review. I read this a while ago, and must apologise for the delay in getting my review up – appropriately enough for the theme of this collection, life has been exceptionally complicated recently!

I knew from reading Bullock’s novel that her prose is something special: powerful, muscular, packing a punch (a pun that reminds me I still have her debut novel, set in the world of boxing, on my TBR). While none of that is lost in her shorter fiction, the roaming focus diffuses the intensity and allows for a more widespread examination of what it means to be human in this complex world. There is a hard edge to these stories, an unflinching gaze at the reality of coming to terms with our modern age. At times, there is an almost journalistic sensibility, a feeling that this is a record, a testimony – the global spread of the stories adds to this.

But there are also plenty of more domestic moments, times when the taut, precise prose and quirky incidents described in minute detail reminded me of Raymond Carver: couples who realise in the quietest of ways that something is not right, characters whose tension is released with hints of violence and also humour. It is a cliche to say that a short story collection covers the whole spectrum of human experience, but Bullock certainly approaches this, offering up tightly constructed narratives that feel entirely real, and are varied enough to display her enormous talent with the written word.

Emily Bullock is a writer who has been added to my ‘must read everything they write’ list – I will be picking up her debut in the new year, and keeping a close eye out for what comes next. If you are a fan of sharp, insightful stories that hit hard but are also laced with tenderness, you’d do very well to get hold of this stunning collection.

Human Terrain by Emily Bullock is published by Reflex Press and is available to purchase here.

Blurb

A teacher asked me a question, and I opened my mouth as a sort of formality but closed it softly, knowing with perfect certainty that nothing would ever come out again.

Ruby gives up talking at a young age. Her mother isn’t always there to notice; she comes and goes and goes and comes, until, one day, she doesn’t. Silence becomes Ruby’s refuge, sheltering her from the weather of her mother’s mental illness and a pressurized suburban atmosphere.

Plangent, deft, and sparkling with wry humour, Somebody Loves You is a moving exploration of how we choose or refuse to tell the stories that shape us.

Review

Huge thanks to And Other Stories for providing me with a proof copy in exchange for an honest review.

There have been three books I’ve read this year which have, for me, wonderfully shattered my expectations of what a novel “should” be, which have blown the possibilities wide open through their sheer dazzling inventiveness and bravery and utter refusal to confine themselves to conventional boundaries. The first is Assembly by Natasha Brown, the second, Salena Godden’s stunning Mrs Death Misses Death. And the third is Mona Arshi’s incredibly powerful debut novel.

Somebody Loves You is, on the surface, deceptively simple: Ruby, a young girl who has given up speech and exists in a quiet world of her own making, shuffles through childhood memories, making beautiful vignettes of piecemeal moments – chapters are often only a page or two long, and the scenes jump back and forth through time. In some ways, this is an intimate story of a family and its struggles, and the relationship between Ruby and her sister is particularly poignantly depicted.

However, like Natasha Brown’s novel, this book is no simple domestic drama. The forces that press down on Ruby and her family are elemental in scope, and there are moments where the universe seems to crack and split and everything at once pours out. The shadows of racism, of mental illness, of suppressed trauma, thicken and swirl around the edges of the story, and it is an immensely powerful piece of work. But there is also quiet beauty, lines of poetic prose which delicately enter the veins, so subtle and true and precise that even though the book is short, I spent a long time on each section, immersing myself in the words.

This is a book that throbs and hums with the power of language. The fact that Ruby, who does not speak, is the one to lead us through it, left me with a really strong sense of both sadness (the ones whose voices are most worth listening to are so often the ones who are unheard) and also hope: powerful words don’t have to be loud and brash, they can be quiet and beautiful and all the more meaningful for that. I can guarantee I will be rereading this book, as I feel I have barely scratched the surface, and that it will have something more to offer on each reading. I can’t recommend it enough.

Somebody Loves You by Mona Arshi is published by And Other Stories and is available to purchase here.

Blurb

‘… I dreamt last night about somebody complaining that he owned a “lesser Cézanne” while I was tearing heartshaped buttons off a shirt, and something about a ferret, the fact that my dreams have become more practical and less expansive, I think, since we got poorer, the fact that I should be swinging wild but instead my dreams are just about tidying the hen coop or unloading the dishwasher, or losing my address book, or I’m cooking noodles for everybody and Leo has a plane to catch in half an hour and there’s no taxi, or I find myself on a bicycle carrying a huge box, the fact that once I dreamt I ate one tiny piece of ham, and that was it, that was the whole dream, the fact that I dream all the wrong stuff and remember all the wrong stuff, what a goofball, “a genuine idiot,” the fact that why do I remember that Amish wool shop and not my mom, …’

LATTICING one cherry pie after another, an Ohio housewife tries to bridge the gaps between reality and the torrent of meaningless info that is the United States of America. She worries about her children, her dead parents, African elephants, the bedroom rituals of “happy couples”, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and how to hatch an abandoned wood pigeon egg. Is there some trick to surviving survivalists? School shootings? Medical debts? Franks ’n’ beans?

A scorching indictment of America’s barbarity, past and present, and a lament for the way we are sleepwalking into environmental disaster, Ducks, Newburyport  is a heresy, a wonder—and a revolution in the novel.

It’s also very, very funny.

Review

I have wanted to read this for a while, but I knew there was no way I could read it in one go without getting seriously behind on all the other reading I wanted to do this year. It made sense, therefore, to split it into manageable monthly sections, which I have listed below in case anyone wants to take on the challenge in 2022!

Firstly, I can definitely recommend this tactic for tackling those chonksters that you’ve been meaning to get around to – it really works! I was worried that dipping in and out of the book would make it hard to concentrate, or that I’d struggle to get back into it after a break, especially because of Ducks’ notoriously idiosyncratic style. However, it wasn’t a problem at all, and I found a page or two enough to resume my immersion in the protagonist’s mesmerising narration. This book is quite magical – it has a hypnotic effect, and after each section I found myself echoing the thought patterns of the main character (lots of ‘the fact that’!). This is stream-of-consciousness on a level not even Joyce or Woolf could have envisaged – it feels like a mind emptying itself onto the page – and yet it is, I promise, still accessible (and I speak as someone who loves Woolf but can’t do Joyce – sorry!).

The breathless, single-sentence style, filled with lists and asides and quirky in-jokes, belies the fact that (sorry, again) there is a narrative depth, a story, which emerges little by little, and which, by the end, I found myself completely invested in. I don’t know how Ellmann managed to write a 1,000 page novel that somehow feels like a single coherent story, with a gripping finale that I was NOT expecting, but she does, and it is glorious.

If you’ve had this one on your radar for a while and been put off by its size, I urge you to pick it up (carefully – I had several near misses reading this behemoth in bed and almost dropping it on my face) and let its rhythmic, funny, often quite moving sentence unspool around you (it is not all in the same style, there are other delights awaiting you, but The Sentence is the main thing) – you won’t regret it. Thanks also to my Twitter friend and reading buddy Jackie, who was on the end of a message whenever I needed to check in with her about the latest section!

Monthly Sections

January – to page 83

February – to page 167

March – to page 249

April – to page 333

May – to page 415

June – to page 499

July – to page 581

August – to page 665

September – to page 747

October – to page 831

November – to page 913

December – to end

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann is published by Galley Beggars and is available to purchase here.

Blurb

Jen Shaw has climbed all her life: daring ascents of sheer rock faces, crumbling buildings, cranes – the riskier the better. Both her work and personal life revolved around climbing, and the adrenaline high it gave her. Until she went too far and hurt the people she cares about. So she’s given it all up now. Honestly, she has. And she’s checked herself into a rehab centre to prove it.

Yet, when Jen awakens to find herself drugged and dangling off the local lighthouse during a wild storm less than twenty-four hours after a ‘family emergency’ takes her home to Cornwall, she needs all her skill to battle her way to safety.

Has Jen fallen back into her old risky ways, or is there a more sinister explanation hidden in her hometown? Only when she has navigated her fragmented memories and faced her troubled past will she be able to piece together what happened – and trust herself to fix it.

Review

Huge thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t read that many thrillers, but I was irresistibly drawn to that opening image of a woman waking to find herself hanging off the edge of a lighthouse with no idea how she got there – it is like the opposite of waking from a nightmare, and wow, it is written so powerfully. Right from the start, we are as invested as Jen in finding out just what the hell has happened, and the pace does not let up throughout this utterly gripping story.

There’s a touch of The Girl on the Train in the way that Jen’s hazy memories leave huge gaps, and she is unable to trust her own wobbly understanding of events, but once we get into the storyline about the family home, Tregonna, the Paula Hawkins vibes give way to a more sinister Daphne du Maurier feel. The mixture of these two modes creates a heady cocktail of danger, mystery and deep psychological intrigue that I found impossible to tear myself away from.

Jen Shaw is a fantastic protagonist – complex, flawed, self-aware enough to invoke our sympathy, both hardened by the world and vulnerable. I’m so pleased this is the start of a series as I really want to see more of Jen. The other characters are well drawn, and the bubbling sense of not knowing who to trust adds a frisson of unease to almost every interaction.

I won’t go into specifics of the plot, as following its twists and turns is one of the great delights for the reader, but I will say that there is some truly excellent misdirection in this book! I had my theories all worked out, and the author toppled them like dominoes!

On The Edge is the start of a really exciting new thriller series, and I strongly urge all fans of the genre to meet Jen Shaw and join her on her heart-stopping adventures.

On The Edge by Jane Jesmond is published by Verve Books and is available to purchase here.

I read seven books in October, and I enjoyed them all, in very different ways! Even for me, this was quite an eclectic reading month, covering everything from ghost stories to thrillers to festive tales. A few of these were read on holiday, which was absolutely blissful, although with two little kids, gone are the days of devouring a book a day by the pool! Here’s a quick round-up, with links to reviews where relevant – I have a few reviews pending as I’m still in catch-up mode, but I’ll get to them soon!

The Whistling by Rebecca Netley (2021)

This is a fabulously spooky read, with just the right amount of supernatural creepiness for me. I really enjoyed it. You can read my full review of The Whistling here.

Somebody Loves You by Mona Arshi (2021)

Somebody Loves You is a short but extremely powerful book. Every line is beautifully crafted, and Ruby is a character who will stay with me. Full review coming soon, but I highly recommend getting your hands on this one.

The Book of Uriel by Elyse Hoffman (2021)

I took part in The Write Reads tour for this highly original book. A powerful blend of history and fantasy, it doesn’t shy away from the horrors of war, but also manages to be readable and surprisingly uplifting. You can read my full thoughts here.

On The Edge by Jane Jesmond (2021)

I really enjoyed this twisty thriller – it isn’t my usual genre, but I do like to mix things up! I whizzed through this one as I found the protagonist, Jen, so original and compelling. Full review to come very soon.

You: From Pissed to Publication by Drew Gummerson (2021)

I loved Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel (full review here) and this chapbook is the perfect accompaniment. By turns funny, rude, irreverent and oddly touching, it’s a sly but good-natured skewering of the elusive quest for publication, and I think any writer would find something to smile wryly at in this book!

More Than Mistletoe by The Christmas Collective (2021)

I loved the festive stories in this anthology, but I also love the story behind the book: a group of writers coming together to support each other and create something. The result is the perfect stocking filler, and a wonderful introduction to some exciting new writing talent. You can read my full review of More Than Mistletoe here.

Human Terrain by Emily Bullock (2021)

Emily Bullock’s novel Inside The Beautiful Inside absolutely blew me away, and I jumped at the chance to read her short story collection. It did not disappoint. The stories are full of kinetic energy – movement and muscle and life in all its messy glory. Full review coming soon, but this is a wonderful collection from Reflex Press, not to be missed.

All in all, it was a pretty good reading month, even though I forgot to read my October section of Ducks, Newburyport, so I have some catching up to do if I’m to finish the beast by the end of the year! I’ve got loads on the TBR for November, so we’ll see what I actually end up reading!

Let me know what you’ve enjoyed recently!

Happy reading!

Ellie x

Blurb

Cosy up for Christmas with 12 very different tales of love with all the festive feels!

More than Mistletoe, the debut anthology from The Christmas Collective, is an eclectic and inclusive mix of stories, with swoon-worthy characters, second chances and happy endings.

Between the pages, you will discover classic romance, festive thrillers, LGBTQ+ love stories, hilarious romcoms and historical settings, these stories really do span the whole spectrum of festive fiction.

Featuring twelve up and coming new authors, this refreshing, diverse and romantic read, is a must-have for Christmas 2021 that will leave you reaching for your Christmas jumper, gingerbread cookies and a mug of hot chocolate!

• Lumikinos by Lucy Alexander
• The Ghost of Christmas Past by Michelle Harris
• Christmas for Two by Marianne Calver
• August in December by Joe Burkett
• Under the Christmas Tree by Cici Maxwell
• Killing Christmas Eve by Jake Godfrey
• Christmas and Cocktails by Jenny Bromham
• Christmas at The Little Blu Bookshop by Sarah Shard
• Not Today, Santa by Martha May Little
• Sealed with a Christmas Kiss by Bláithín O’Reilly Murphy
• Love Forever by Donna Gowland
• The Last Christmas by S.L.Robinson

Review

I was delighted when The Christmas Collective reached out and asked if I would like to review More Than Mistletoe, and I owe them huge thanks not only for providing a digital copy in exchange for an honest review, but also for the wonderful festive gift box they sent out to reviewers. As we all know, book bloggers are completely impartial and not at all swayed by freebies, but we do not have hearts of stone, and I was deeply touched! Above all, I think it shows the enormous effort and care that has gone into producing this labour of love – of which, more later.

Onto the stories: as I have said before, I don’t tend to theme my reading around seasons, so it was perhaps appropriately Ellie-ish that I read this festive collection in the sunshine on holiday! I like a bit of juxtaposition, and reading snowy tales on the beach created the desired effect, although I suspect the intention is more that this book should be read curled up by a roaring fire with a mug of hot chocolate beside you. Which would definitely also work! The stories themselves are, as promised, a lovely, eclectic mix, and the perfect length for dipping into two or three at a time.

There’s a strong rom com vibe to many of the stories (it is Christmas, after all), but often with a twist or an unexpected slant that brings something new to the genre. There are also elements of mysteries, thrillers, quirky tales that don’t quite fit a single genre (my favourite sort of story!) – in short, definitely something for everyone. I enjoyed all of the stories: I loved the twist of ‘Lumikinos’ by Lucy Robinson, the gentle poignancy of ‘Christmas for Two’ by Marianne Calver, and the surprising change of mood provided by Jake Godfrey’s ‘Killing Christmas Eve’. I was particularly moved by the final story in the collection, S.L. Robinson’s ‘The Last Christmas’ – and one of the most exciting things is that several of the stories are being developed into full-length novels, so there are plenty of chances to add to the ‘books to watch out for’ list.

Indeed, in some ways the most important, heart-warming story of all is how this collection came into being. Authors supporting authors, working together to create something they believe in, is something I LOVE to see, and everything from the showcase style of putting the stories into their context (ie giving information about where they fit into a longer work), to the lovely, warm, funny biographies at the back of the book reveals that this is a truly collaborative, supportive venture, and I think The Christmas Collective deserve a massive pat on the back for all their hard work.

More Than Mistletoe would make a great stocking filler for a Christmas-loving reader, or else buy it for yourself for your winter hygge downtime, or your Christmas Eve Jolabokaflod (the most wonderful Icelandic tradition of exchanging books and reading into the night). It really is a lovely collection, and I’ll be watching out for all of these authors in the future, and wishing them the very best of luck.

More Than Mistletoe is available to purchase in paperback or ebook here (it is also free on Kindle Unlimited). You can follow The Christmas Collective on Twitter @ChristmasCo2021 and Instagram @christmasco2021

Blurb

In the fires of World War II, a child must save his people from darkness…

Ten-year-old Uriel has always been an outcast. Born mute in a Jewish village known for its choir, he escapes into old stories of his people, stories of angels and monsters. But when the fires of the Holocaust consume his village, he learns that the stories he writes in his golden notebook are terrifyingly real.

In the aftermath of the attack, Uriel is taken in by Uwe, a kind-hearted linguist forced to work for the commander of the local Nazi Police, the affably brutal Major Brandt. Uwe wants to keep Uriel safe, but Uriel can’t stay hidden. The angels of his tales have come to him with a dire message: Michael, guardian angel of the Jewish people, is missing. Without their angel, the Jewish people are doomed, and Michael’s angelic brethren cannot search for him in the lands corrupted by Nazi evil.

With the lives of millions at stake, Uriel must find Michael and free him from the clutches of the Angel of Death…even if that means putting Uwe in mortal danger.

The Book of Uriel is a heartbreaking blend of historical fiction and Jewish folklore that will enthrall fans of The Book Thief and The World That We Knew.

Review

Huge thanks to the author and to The Write Reads for my spot on the blog tour and for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

There is a lot going on in this book, and at first I wasn’t sure about flicking between the two modes of the supernatural world of the angels and the brutal realism of Nazi violence, but it actually works really well, and makes for a gripping and profound story. The characters are well-rounded and complex – even the evil Major Brandt is given nuance and disturbingly likeable characteristics – in some ways, his charm and humour make him even more monstrous. Uwe and Uriel are characters you can’t help but root for, and I was carried along by the twists and turns of their adventures in the forest. There is a kind of breathless feel about some of the passages, and I did wonder if quite so many quests and mysteries needed to be packed in, but it certainly makes for a very ‘full’ book, one that feels resonant with Jewish folklore and rich in symbolism.

I think that is what I liked the most about The Book of Uriel – it feels like a really detailed exploration of Jewish lore, of the stories, most of which I was not familiar with, that Uriel carries in his heart. The fact that Uwe is unaware of the paranormal element of Uriel’s adventures is a really nice touch, as it allows his strand of the story to focus entirely on the human cost of the Nazi regime, contrasting the almost mythological feel of Uriel’s quest with the vile actions taken by Brandt and his men. The question of who are the demons takes on a philosophical slant as we see both literal and metaphorical ‘angels’ of Death. It is a book which really makes you think, and which, it seems to me, pays beautiful homage to the Jewish faith, honouring the stories and the traditions that have been passed down the generations.

It is violent, and certain scenes are very upsetting, but I think it is important that the author shows the brutality even as she weaves the more fantastical elements of the story among the shocking violence. Uriel is a really special character – even though he doesn’t say a word, it is easy to see why Uwe feels so paternal and protective towards him, and his spark and courage and acceptance of his role all make him incredibly endearing. I felt a real love for him by the end of the book, and I think Hoffman does justice to her wonderful protagonist. I’m grateful to have read his story.

About the Author

Elyse Hoffman strives to tell historical tales with new twists: she loves to meld WWII and Jewish history with fantasy, folklore, and the paranormal. She has written six works of Holocaust historical fiction: the five books of The Barracks of the Holocaust and The Book of Uriel.

Links

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Uriel-Novel-WWII-ebook/dp/B08NZYJGB9

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55991309

Blurb

In the summer of 2002, nineteen-year-old Kim Hae-on was murdered in what became known as the High School Beauty Murder. There were two suspects: Shin Jeongjun, who had a rock-solid alibi, and Han Manu, to whom no evidence could be pinned. The case went cold.

Seventeen years pass without justice, and the grief and uncertainty take a cruel toll on her younger sister, Da-on, in particular. Unable to move on with her life, Da-on tries in her own twisted way to recover some of what she’s lost, ultimately setting out to find the truth of what happened.

Told at different points in time from the perspectives of Da-on and two of Hae-on’s classmates, Lemon is a piercing psychological portrait that takes the shape of a crime novel and is a must-read novel of 2021.

Review

Huge thanks to Head of Zeus for my spot on the blog tour, and for providing me with a beautiful proof copy in exchange for an honest review.

It feels like a cop-out, as I say this about quite a few books, but Lemon really is a very difficult book to review! I’ll start by saying I loved it – it really is so different from anything else I have read – and it is the sort of book you will want to talk about immediately with others who have read it (as we’ve been doing in the Insta discussion group!). It is a book that manages to be both hugely clever and very readable. This is crime fiction, but not as we know it.

From the tragic death of Kim Hae-on, the story spins out into the future, following those affected by (and accused of) the murder. Dae-on, her younger sister, is our touchstone, the character we spend the most time with, but we also enter the viewpoints of Eonni and Taerim, both former classmates, and as the years pass, we find out hints of what happened at the time, and the spiral of incidents that has taken place in the aftermath. At one point, one of the characters notices something, and says “I couldn’t help but find this fact chilling,” and that pretty much sums up how I felt while reading this book. The story is slippery, elusive, hard to pin down and yet there is a core of something dark running through it that keeps you reading, even as you might wonder what exactly is going on.

There are elements that would appeal to fans of true crime podcasts, and others that provide a kind of slantwise take on the crime genre. It reminded me slightly of Claudia Piñeiro’s excellent novel Elena Knows, in that it takes a familiar genre and creates something entirely new out of it, but as I mentioned before, it is very hard to compare Lemon to anything but itself, so strikingly original is it.

This is a short novel, but it manages to say so much in its gaps and silences, in what it refuses to spell out explicitly. If you are a fan of a neat and tidy conclusion, you may find this book frustrating, but you will certainly come away with a lot of theories, and a lot to discuss. I thought it was brilliant – a darkly ambiguous book that sticks in the mind long after your finish it.

About the Author

Kwon Yeo-sun is an award-winning Korean writer. She has won the Sangsang Literary Award, Oh Yeongsu Literature Award, Yi Sang Literary Prize, Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, Tong-ni Literature Prize and Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award. Lemon is her first novel to be published in the English language.

About the Translator

Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. She received the TA First Translation Prize and the LTI Korea Translation Award for her translation of Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale, which was also a finalist for both the 2018 PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award. Her recent translations include Ha Seong-nan’s Bluebeard’s First Wife, Ancco’s Nineteen, and Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Grass.

Purchase Links

Amazon UK: https://bit.ly/3mw4AXa

Waterstones: https://bit.ly/3mw4AXa

Bookshop.org: https://bit.ly/3DbTxJg

Blackwells: https://bit.ly/2YqvirS

Blurb

Alone in the world, Elspeth Swansome takes the position of nanny to a family on the remote Scottish island of Skelthsea.

Her charge, Mary, hasn’t uttered a word since the sudden death of her twin, William – just days after their former nanny disappeared.

No one will speak of what happened to William. Just as no one can explain the hypnotic lullabies sung in empty corridors. Nor the strange dolls that appear in abandoned rooms. Nor the faint whistling that comes in the night . . .

As winter draws in and passage to the mainland becomes impossible, Elspeth finds herself trapped.

But is this house haunted by the ghosts of the past?

OR THE SECRETS OF THE LIVING . . . ?
________

Chilling, twisty and emotionally gripping, The Whistling is an atmospheric page-turner with shades of the classics, yet a unique character of its own, perfect for fans of Susan Hill and Laura Purcell.

Review

Huge thanks to Ella Watkins at Penguin Michael Joseph for my spot on the tour, and for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t tend to theme my reading around the time of year, so it is merely a lucky coincidence that I ended up reading The Whistling during ‘spooky season’. I have to admit, reading it in bed with the wind howling and the rain lashing down outside, was spectacularly atmospheric, and that’s before you add in the previous week’s experience of hearing ‘footsteps’ in our loft (it was birds on the roof, btw, but I swear it sounded like footsteps!) Anyway, suffice it to say that the scene was set for me to be properly scared by this book, and indeed, it did make me a bit jumpy for a few days!

What I loved about The Whistling, though, is that it doesn’t go in for cheap thrills and shocks. It builds up the tension by tiny increments, letting us become fully immersed in Elspeth’s experiences on Skelthsea, developing the characters as much, if not more, than the spooky plot. As Elspeth desperately tries to cling to rational explanations for the strange happenings, we are right alongside her, maintaining our scepticism as long as we can even as the evidence mounts that there is something unnatural going on at Iskar, the family home that is simply dripping with du Maurier-esque atmosphere. As with the best first person narratives, we are so firmly in Elspeth’s viewpoint that each suspicion, each fluctuation in how she views the other characters, becomes part of our own response, and I found myself unwilling to trust anyone at all apart from our narrator.

There is something about the book that reminds me not only of du Maurier but also of Stuart Turton’s The Devil and the Dark Water – it doesn’t ask you to suspend your disbelief and just buy into the (potential) ghostliness, instead it slowly and carefully assembles the evidence, and, in the end, becomes something more than just a supernatural tale. I don’t want to spoil anything about this book, but I will say that I found the way all the threads wrapped up deeply satisfying. It is a really clever story, and the writing is beautiful, especially when evoking the landscape.

If you’re looking for a fast-paced, gore-filled horror, this is not it; but if you like your books creepy and atmospheric and full of dark corners, strange noises and sinister traditions, I highly recommend getting your hands on this wonderfully crafted novel. I’m really looking forward to reading more by this author.

The Whistling by Rebecca Netley is published by Penguin Michael Joseph and is available to purchase here.