276°
Posted 20 hours ago

The House of Whispers: A gripping new contemporary psychological thriller with a chilling twist!

£4.495£8.99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

A Victorian tale replete with laudanum, tuberculosis and possibly fairies… a clever, creepy read.”— Sunday Express, Best New Thrillers Bone China did not let me down. There was my much loved Cornwall which can indeed be a spooky place up on the moors and on the bleaker parts of the coast line. There was all the history of the time - the folklore, the strange to us medical practices, the china clay industry in earlier days.

I loved how atmospheric the settings were, from house to the cliffs. The historical and folklore aspects of the story also added to the intrigue. The book was slow at times, but the different timelines helped propelled the story. This is a good book, if you like slow burning gothic horror. I love Author Laura Purcell she is one of my favorites. This particular book is not my favorite of hers. The book is true to Purcell, a slow burn into the story with a sudden end. I loved the first half of the book but the second half when a new characters past started up I was a bit confused. I also didn't understand some of the dark fae? Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft's family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken, but Dr Pinecroft is working on a ground breaking experiment, convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the same disease in the cliffs beneath his new Cornish home. I didn’t love this one as her previous two books. Neither have come close to The Silent Companions - I loved that one.I really enjoyed reading Laura Purcell’s book, “The Silent Companions,” therefore, I was quite excited to get my hands on a copy of this book. I enjoyed the past story line more than the present. I found the characters in the past story line were more interesting and more fleshed out. I felt that there was something missing with Hester's character. I wanted to know a little bit more about her and her past before she was employed by her previous employer. We do get some info but I really felt as if her character was a little flat. I had high hopes for this book as I have enjoyed her other books The Silent Companions and The Corset. Perhaps I was holding this book up to a very high standard, but I feel it wasn't quite as good as the other books I have read by her. I'll still be on the lookout for future books by this Author.

A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism. The story was similar to The Corset in that the main character considered herself responsible for the deaths which seemed to follow her. She was in fact a very unreliable narrator since she was mostly under the effects of either gin or laudanum but that just added to the overall sense of suspicion and confusion. The characters are well drawn out and detailed. The story is full of deep and vivid imagery. It is quite reminiscent of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, with the same gothic undertones. Hester soon realizes that the task at hand is not as simple as she thought. Miss Pinecroft, hardly moves or speaks and spends her time sitting in a room surrounded by china cups and plates. Miss Pinecroft’s ward is Rosewyn, a strange young woman. There is also a highly superstitious maid called Creeda who believes in fairy folklore, and keeps insisting that Rosewyn needs to be protected from fairies who are trying to whisk her away and leave a changeling in her place.Creeda, who is an unnerving young woman at the time is just as obsessed with fairy legends and folk tales in the past, as she is in the present and tells Louise all sorts of stories about fairies and changelings. I have had Bone China on my list for some time, and considering how much I loved "The Silent Companions" I was hoping for something just as good. Unfortunately, this just wasn't the case. Hester Why arrived in Cornwall with a hope for a fresh beginning as the new live-in nurse. Running from her troubled past, little did she know Morvoren House held its own secret, festering into the household in the last 40 years. As she tried to help them with the truth, she must toe it delicately or risked shattering everything she believed in. I enjoyed reading the two separate parts of Louise's life and trying to work out what had really happened in the past. Then came the totally surprising ending and I realised we will never really know. I usually hate endings that leave things unexplained - for some reason I do not mind when this author does it! What will she write next I wonder. I have read and loved The Silent Companions and The Corset, so I was really excited when I saw LP had a new book due out. Bone China continues LP’s reign as the new Queen of Gothic Fiction.

I think at this stage, we can say the only book I enjoyed from Purcell is The Silent Companions. The Corset was a miss being very crowded and having plot holes in it.Forty years ago, Louise and her father, Dr Pinecroft, lost their entire family to consumption, leaving them the only survivors, weighed down by an unbearable grief. Dr Pinecroft becomes convinced that sea air is the key to a cure for the ravages of the disease. To prove his controversial ideas, he undertakes an experiment, acquiring some prisoners with the disease, with his daughter, Louise helping him to manage. He brings them to the house, has them taken down into the caves, looked after by carers. What happens there has consequences that echo down the years, and form the basis of local legends and myths. Hester is a woman with the love of gin and opium, it is rather difficult to discern just how far we can trust her through the blurring haze of unreliable experiences. The author excels in creating the psychological conditions where ambiguity runs throughout the narrative, is it the supernatural at work or is it madness?

The second part of the novel will reveal what Hester is running from and that Hester is not even her real name. This part of the novel gives the reader some insight into Hester’s character and reveals that she is an alcoholic. This affliction plays a wonderful role in the narrative placing doubt in the reader’s mind about everything Hester encounters later in the novel. I must say that I loved the character of Hester. A broken young woman, addicted to gin, stealing the laudanum from the supplies. Hester is flawed and far from your perfect cardboard heroine. With Louise’s help, Dr Pinecroft does experiments and tries to test his theories of treating consumption. He takes a group of prisoners, who are suffering from the illness, and places them in a cave beneath the cliffs, where he says the salty sea air will be good for their health. The details of Dr. Pinecroft’s research are based on real life cases from the Victorian era. Purcell excels at creating a spooky Gothic ambience…A dark and unsettling novel for lovers of Rebeccaand Jane Eyre.”— Kirkus

Need Help?

When I see a book by Laura Purcell now I snap it up instantly. I also know what to expect - something Victorian, gothic, slightly creepy, containing lots of accurate historical fact, well written and very enjoyable. Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love. A gothic tale set in a rambling house by the sea in which a maid cares for a mute old woman with a mysterious past, alongside her superstitious staff–from the author of The Silent Companions. Purcell paints a colorful portrait of her tale’s distant time and place and immerses the reader in an era when superstition was a tenacious thread in the social fabric that bound its people. Her tale of secret guilt and atoning for it through ancient customs will please fans of classic gothic melodrama.”— Publisher’s Weekly Forty years later, Hester arrives at Morvoren House to take up a position as nurse to the now partially paralyzed and mute Miss Pinecroft. Hester has fled to Cornwall to try to escape her past, but surrounded by superstitious staff enacting bizarre rituals, she soon discovers her new home may be just as dangerous as her last.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment