Publisher: Trapeze
Publication Date: 16 Sept. 2021
Genre: Historical Fantasy Fiction
Summary:
When well-to-do Hester learns of her sister Mercy's death at a Nottinghamshire workhouse, she travels to Southwell to find out how her sister ended up at such a place.
Haunted by her sister's ghost, Hester sets out to uncover the truth, when the official story reported by the workhouse master proves to be untrue. Mercy was pregnant - both her and the baby are said to be dead of cholera, but the workhouse hasn't had an outbreak for years.
Hester discovers a strange trend in the workhouse of children going missing. One woman tells her about the Pale Lady, a ghostly figure that steals babies in the night. Is this lady a myth or is something more sinister afoot at the Southwell poorhouse?
As Hester investigates, she uncovers a conspiracy, one that someone is determined to keep a secret, no matter the cost...
Haunted by her sister's ghost, Hester sets out to uncover the truth, when the official story reported by the workhouse master proves to be untrue. Mercy was pregnant - both her and the baby are said to be dead of cholera, but the workhouse hasn't had an outbreak for years.
Hester discovers a strange trend in the workhouse of children going missing. One woman tells her about the Pale Lady, a ghostly figure that steals babies in the night. Is this lady a myth or is something more sinister afoot at the Southwell poorhouse?
As Hester investigates, she uncovers a conspiracy, one that someone is determined to keep a secret, no matter the cost...
Review:
So August was our local author event month and we were very lucky that the fabulous Rhiannon Ward agreed to come to our meeting! Safe to say we were all more than a little excited about it before we'd read the book, and the excitement increased after we had (spoiler alert, we loved it). Now Rhiannon ward is the name crime writer Sarah ward uses to write her gothic horror books and when we were choosing this month's book we had all the books she'd written as a choice but this one came out on top(obviously).
What made it even better was she writes about the local area and The Shadowing was set in Southwell!
Now I don't want to give too much of the book away, you know I try not to spoil books because I really want you to go read it yourselves, but it was fantastically written and I really loved Hester the main character.
Now I don't want to give too much of the book away, you know I try not to spoil books because I really want you to go read it yourselves, but it was fantastically written and I really loved Hester the main character.
I personally devoured it in a couple of days, if I didn't have a small child it probably would have been a one-sitting kind of book because I just got so pulled into the story. I loved that the main character was a quaker and that I actually learned a little bit more about them through the story. I don't know much about Quakers, aside from the fact that all the main chocolate brands we know and love were started by Quaker families and that they set really good working practices for how to look after your workers. So finding out that there were different sort of levels of religion, some were more strict than others was really interesting. I can't wait to read her next gothic horror, or go dip into her crime for that matter because she is a great writer, and quite frankly a lovely human being!
The rest of the ladies loved it as well, as you'll see from the score! But here are a few quotes from the evening after I asked them to give me one sentence about why they enjoyed it.
"So many beautiful elements in it that I can't sum it up in one sentence!"
"I like the way it covered the poverty of the time"
In conclusion, Thank you Rhiannon Ward for taking the time to come to our meeting and answer our questions, you are always welcome back we loved chatting with you and we loved your book!
Krystina x
Book Club Score -8/10
