After reading so many Harlequin manga, it feels weird to pick up a manga that isn't about gushy romance, but gushy body parts. You think I'm kidding? Man, this is some creepy shit. I thought it was going to be a light-hearted gothic novel with cute little anime girls but now I'm literally freaking out because it's midnight and someone I know might disappear into the woods.
Jeanie and Amber are twin girls who are going to a boarding college in the Australian bushlands because reasons. They thought it would be an opportunity to connect with her aunt, but she drops them off and then immediately leaves under the cover of night, leaving them at the mercy of the crotchety and slightly creepy teachers, and the older than dirt VP. Almost as soon as they take up residence in the school, creepy things happen. Seances go awry, mirrors don't act normally, things watch them in the shadows, and they have some MFing terrifying nightmares about dead girls frolicking in trees raining blood. OH. EM. GEE.
I was actually very impressed by this story and how thoughtful and mysterious and creepy everything is. Sometimes horror anime goes totally over the top, like Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, or "When the Cicadas Cry" had a good atmosphere but also relied on shock horror and had a lot of splatterpunk, whereas THE DREAMING is much more psychological in nature and reminds me of Japanese horror films like The Ring and The Grudge in how it relies on atmosphere, emotion, and secrets to keep the story driving to its inevitable and creepy climax.
Even after finishing this review, I still have chills. I'm going to have to stay up for another hour or two reading something that isn't scary. If you enjoy horror movies, you should pick up this book. It is almost cinematic in its delivery, to the point where I could almost hear the wind and the eerie howls. Apparently the story was loosely inspired by The Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Have you ever felt both simultaneously overwhelmed and underwhelmed by a book? Because that's kind of how I felt about this one, BLEDDING SORROW. It wasn't bad, but everyone was singing its praises to me about how it was such a mind-shattering Gothic novel that didn't care about happy endings, and reveled in its own twisted nature. That sounded like something I could totally get on board with, and I knew already that this author was fully capable of writing such dark and gloomy stuff that reading it could just about ruin your day, because Marilyn Harris also wrote THE EDEN PASSION, which has the dubious honor of being one of the more twisted and unpleasant "romance" novels I have ever read.
BLEDDING SORROW is only a romance in the most liberal sense of the word. There are two people who are in love in this book, but other than that, it doesn't really fit the genre for a wide variety of reasons. The focus of BLEDDING SORROW is definitely Gothic horror. The setting is an old Elizabethan house owned by the Bleddings, minor nobility that can be traced back centuries. The current owner, Geoffrey Bledding, is impoverished and must lease it out to the Historical Trust's various events. He and his staff are relegated to a distant wing of the house and are expected to make nice with the tourists and the students touring his home, which he does, playing host most convincingly.
But Geoffrey is not the gentlemanly lord that he seems. He's got his wife, Ann, locked away (an homage to the madwoman in the attic trope, perhaps), only he's the one who has caused her to be mad through many nights of druggings and rapes. Poor Ann's only solace are the small mercies of Caldy More, the servant, and the curious attentions of the handsome new coachman whose job it is to drive the coach and do menial tasks around the estate. Ironically, the first Geoffrey Bledding was also cuckolded by a coachman, and his reaction to this was, well, shall we say unreasonable.
Ghosts haunt BLEDDING SORROW, foreshadowing what will happen. All of the characters in the book seem to be locked into their paths, without question; this is a book that seems to believe in both fate, and the idea that history repeats itself. You'll suspect the ending, but it will probably still take you by surprise. I read a spoiler in one of the reviews on Goodreads and was still taken aback. Holy shit. What an unfair, depraved little book. But then, of course the woman who decided to have a narcissistic coward as the hero of her romance would choose to end her Gothic romance in this way.
Should you read it? Only if you like dark, depressing books and aren't easily offended by outmoded tropes and language. BLEDDING SORROW is not PC, and it doesn't pull back any punches when it comes to the mistreatment of its characters. I think it might have been a more effective book if the characters were more fully fleshed out. Ironically, the supporting character, Caldy More, has the most deep and thoughtful development over the book, whereas the three mains feel much more shallow and superficial - at least to me. That said, I did think it was interesting, and if you can manage to find a copy (sadly it's still out of print), it's worth a read for the WTFery alone.
Reading a Phyllis Whitney novel after a Victoria Holt has officially cemented Ms. Whitney as my new favorite gothic romance author. Many gothic romance authors wrote historical and "contemporary" gothic novels, but the "contemporary" ones were often horrendously dated and bad, because they were written in the same overly wordy and prudishly old-fashioned style, which ended up feeling jarring and anachronistic. Here, with SNOWFIRE, Whitney managed to capture the claustrophobic and smothering atmosphere of a crumbling manor home on the moors, even though it's set in a swanky modern ski lodge. How does she do it? With atmosphere, crafty wordsmithing, and a plucky heroine reminiscent of Nancy Drew who is determined to do what is right, even if it means sacrificing her own beliefs.
The heroine is named Linda and she has come to the Graystones, a cozy ski lodge, not for skiing but to exonerate her brother, Stuart. The Graystones are owned by a man named Julian McCabe, an ex-champion skiier. His wife, Margot McCabe, also used to love to ski, but an accident left her in a wheelchair and she was never quite the same afterwards. When she ended up being pushed off the ramp on her balcony by an unknown assailant, Stuart, who was studying skiing under Julian and his sinister groundsman, Emory, was blamed. There are too many holes in the story given, however, so Linda manages to secure a position as a hostess of the lodge while also attempting to ingratiate herself into the McCabe family to find out more information about who might have wanted to kill Margot - and why.
One of the things I love about Whitney's works is that she is so good at writing emotional scenes. A lot of gothic romances seem watered down and dreary, but that has never been the case for me when reading a Phyllis A. Whitney book. The McCabe family is emotionally devastated over Margot's death and features a wide array of characters that are eccentric and suspicious. There's Julian, of course, who might have wanted his wife dead because of the hindrance she proved. There's Julian's sister, Shan, who is a flower child that carries spells in her back pocket and believes that the family cat is a reincarnation of Margot (creepy). And then there's Adria, the daughter of Margot and Julian, who might also have reason to kill Margot, and seems to be seriously emotionally disturbed.
I think one of the reasons I love these gothic novels so much is that they remind me of the middle grade Point Horror novellas I devoured by the dozens in middle school. This one in particular made me think of that old R.L. Stine novella, SKI WEEKEND. They're a little dated but in a way that feels more nostalgic than tone-deaf, and I recommend them to anyone who used to read all those trashy middle grade horror novels and then grew up craving more. :)
As if I needed an excuse to read more gothic romances... well, I do, which is why I'm taking part in a Halloween Reading Challenge designed to celebrate all things paranormal, dark, and spooky in my favorite genre - romance.
Victoria Holt, who died in 1993, was one of the obvious go-to choices for the "author who is dead" category. Not only was she exceptionally prolific, she was also a writer in two of my favorite vintage romance subgenres: pulpy gothics and pulpy historicals (the historicals were written under the penname, Jean Plaidy). The only problem with that is that being so prolific means that sometimes, quality takes a nosedive. There are Holt novels that I loved... and then there are Holt novels that left me shaking my head and going WHAT.
THE SHIVERING SANDS has a kind of silly title, which made me think of the Shifting Sand Lands level from Mario 64, and an equally silly premise. Our heroine, Caroline, was the only non-archeologist in her family. She loved music. One day, both her parents died tragically on their way to a dig, leaving her archeology-loving sister, Roma, and her both adult orphans to pave their own way. Roma continued doing her thing and became a prominent influence in her field, whereas Caroline decided to give up her passion to be supportive of her man, Pietro, whom she obviously still respects despite him being a grade-A jerk who says things like "you are worthy of me." He dies tragically too, and Caroline fiddlefarts around until Roma goes missing on a dig in Kent, after which Caroline decides to go play some Scooby Doo and figure out where her sister went.
WARNING: SPOILERS
Being the widow of a famous pianist (and a pianist of some repute herself) gives her easy entrance to the family who owns the lands where Roma was investigating. And this family - this family has one of the most confusing vipers' nest of a relationship tree that I have encountered in a while. She becomes piano teacher to three girls, one of whom is the vicar's daughter (Silvia). The other two girls, Allegra and Alice, have TWO different mothers. Alice is, I believe, the illegitimate child of the vicar's daughter's wife and the Stacy patriarch, Sir William. Allegra is the daughter of the black sheep son of Sir William, Napier, and a gypsy woman. This means that Alice, while being young enough to be Napier's daughter, is actually his step-sister(?) and Silvia's half-sister. There's this crazy old woman named Sybil who likes to paint creepy paintings, and I think she is Sir William's spinster sister, which would make her Alice's aunt, and Allegra's great-aunt. Napier, meanwhile, is engaged to Sir William's rich ward, Edith, which has put him back in his father's favor, because he has been ostracized for several years due to his possible murder of his younger brother and family golden child, Beau, which led his mother to commit suicide. BUT WAIT, there's more. As it turns out, Allegra is actually Beau's daughter, not Napier's, so she is his niece, and not his daughter. And Alice isn't Sir William's child at all, but the child of a criminal. If that doesn't give you a headache, I'm not sure what will. But man, I had a hell of a time trying to keep track of all these people.
THE SHIVERING SANDS is one of my least favorite Holt novels. It's so boring and slow to start that I skimmed for the first 150-pages or so. Then she employs this gross trope she's done in a couple of other books of hers that I can't stand. The heroine falls for a MARRIED man and Holt legitimizes this relationship by killing off the wife somehow so he's freed up for the heroine. The author did this in THE DEVIL ON HORSEBACK as well, which is another book of hers I wasn't crazy about. It was even more annoying here because the wife was killed in a series of 80s slasher movie-esque murder sprees, as well as the heroine's sister (which bummed me out - I was hoping she'd be returned safely). To the author's credit, I actually didn't guess who the killer was until the reveal, and the heroine ends up in some pretty serious trouble at the end. Too bad the previous 200 pages before the grand reveal didn't make me care more. Also, F that hero, who is just as judgy and pretentious as her ex-husband. He doesn't have any of the rugged gothic charm that some of Holt's other heroes have, and the excessive name-drops of Edward Rochester from Jane Eyre didn't win this book any favors, because all it did was remind me of other, better gothic romances that I could be reading instead.
I'm even more annoyed because usually I only spend $1.99 on an ebook, but since this is an author I usually like, I bit the bullet and spend $2.50 or whatever it was this ebook cost when it was on sale. So the fact that I did that and had this book blow so much was the straw on the camel's back, as far as I'm concerned. If you want to get into this author, I'd recommend starting with THE PRIDE OF THE PEACOCK, MENFREYA IN THE MORNING, or ON THE NIGHT OF THE SEVENTH MOON. Stay away from this one, though, unless you want to be annoyed and confused, like I was.
Reading this book made me so, so happy because it's basically everything I ever wanted in a gothic novel. October is the perfect time of the year to be reading these too. When the leaves start turning and the weather cools down, there's nothing better than bundling up in your favorite blanket with a mug of tea and hunkering down with an old-timey mystery novel from the pre-Internet days.
I was suckered into buying THE QUICKSILVER POOL because the premise seemed to be promising a Daphne DuMaurier/REBECCA-inspired jaunt through the post-Civil War South. The heroine, Lora, was a nurse during the Civil War and ended up marrying wealthy Union soldier, Wade. When we meet her, he is just bringing her home to meet the fam, which includes his son from his previous marriage, Jemmy, and the looming and sinister matriarch, Mrs. Tyler.
Lora quickly becomes miserable because it's clear that her husband still carries a torch for his first wife, whose presence looms everywhere in the house. Her mother-in-law is awful, and when she's not making snide comments about how much better the first wife was, she's mocking Lora for being classless and inferior, and emotionally blackmailing everyone else in order to get her way. Other sinister characters include the sister of the first wife, a woman named Morgan who might have designs on Lora's husband, and a mysterious freed slave named Rebecca. REBECCA. Oh, yes, this was definitely REBECCA-inspired. That absolutely cinches it.
The last book I read by Phyllis Whitney was called THE MOONFLOWER and was also post-war, only that war in question was WWII. Many of the things I liked about THE QUICKSILVER POND were also present in THE MOONFLOWER - a rich and detailed setting, complex and sometimes unlikable characters who develop in interesting ways over the course of the story, and an emphasis on familial relationships and interactions that are strengthened through adversity. Another one of my favorite gothic romance authors is Victoria Holt, but many of her heroines are passive and lack agency, and she tends to fall into the trap of demonizing The Other Woman. Whitney, by contrast, is much more feminist in flavor - her heroines are independent and grow stronger as the books go on, and, even more shocking and welcome: she often has a surprising and interesting twist with the other women you meet in the story, making them into interesting and well-rounded characters.
Like THE MOONFLOWER, THE QUICKSILVER POND is slow to start, but then it really picks up the pace and is full of action. It's largely character-driven, but when those characters might be involved in covering up family secrets and murders, the pace quickly picks up. I couldn't put this book down and was desperate to find out what everyone was hiding. I wasn't disappointed. The ending was pretty great, and showed just how developed each of the characters was, in my opinion.
One caveat: the N word is used once, towards the end, but not in a positive or casual way - and the person who says it is not good. I understand some people will take issue with this, but in a post-Civil War society near the South where people are feeling angry and cheated over the outcome of the war, this felt pretty realistic to me. You may feel differently, and that is your right. /shrug
If you want to get in on the gothic-novel craze but are afraid they might put you to sleep with their harmless coziness, pick up this book. This was a great book. Definitely my fave of hers so far. You can expect to see more paranormal- and mystery-themed romances from me this month as I work through this Halloween-themed challenge. So far, it seems to me that I'm off to a pretty good start. (If you want to take a peek at what other books I'll be doing this month, you can view them here.)
There's been an increase in horror novels being targeted at young women and I'm super into that, because they tend to be less focused on gore and more on psychological and atmospheric elements, which are the two things that I really love in my horror stories when I choose to read them. It's more Gothic and less, you know, splatterpunk.
I've read four such books pretty recently. WHAT BIG TEETH, WILDER GIRLS, HOUSE OF HOLLOW, and now SAWKILL GIRLS. I loved HoH, I really liked WBT, I hated WG, and I was really bored by SG, sadly. It's not the worst of the lot but it felt very over-written to me because unlike some of the other stories, which gradually build up to the dark reveal, we're spoiled pretty early on into seeing what's really happening and then we're just expected to sit around and wait while it unfolds. I think my friend jade said it best in their review, when they describe the pacing as "glacial." There's three POVs and they're all filled with this purple prose style of writing that I might have liked when I was fourteen but feels slightly embarrassing now. I tried to stick it out but I'm not feeling this one. Your mileage may vary.
💙 I read this for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' New Years 2018 Reading Challenge, for the category of: Paranormal Romance. For more info on this challenge, click here. 💙
Look at that cover - oh my God, the pose, the costumes, the cheese. This is what I live for, as a reviewer of vintage romance novels. Bad romance covers are a key part of the Old Skool Experience™. That said, once I got over the low resolution Photoshop job and what is either a B-movie vampire wearing a Target Halloween costume or an innovative male stripper wearing a pair of armpit tassels, I noticed the small blurb at the top that said, "A breathtaking vampire romance in the tradition of LINDA LAEL MILLER." Once I stopped giggling over the (I'm assuming) unintentional pun of "breathtaking" to refer to a vampire romance, I was like, "Wait, why does Linda Lael Miller sound so familiar?"
...Oh wait, I remember. She's that lady who wrote FOREVER AND THE NIGHT: the romance novel that has the dubious honor of being one of the worst vampire novels I ever read, due to "Anglo-Saxon" sex words, eyelid-licking, and Nazi costumes.
And this book is written "in the tradition" of... that.
To PRINCE OF THE NIGHT's credit, it isn't quite that cringe-worthy, but it's still pretty bad. What makes this sad, is that the book actually has a really great start. Cordelia is an upstanding young English miss. She's escorting her pregnant cousin, Mary, and her maid Ellen, to this reclusive Italian estate called the Three Fountains - allegedly a long-forgotten home owned by her father. When she gets there, she's shocked to find out that the estate - which is really more of a sprawling mansion - already has an owner, the Count of Albion.
Right away, things are super suspicious. There are several murders, which may or may not have to do with the Second Italian War of Independence; the Count has a number of young boys as servants, avoids being in their company, won't eat the food, and makes a creepy comment about Cordelia being a virgin; and, oh yes, the two Austrian soldiers who escorted Mary and Cordelia to the castle from the inn seem super suspicious of everyone - especially Cordelia - and nobody takes her suspicious seriously, except for the Count's sinister and elderly maid.
As I said, the beginning is great, and has that claustrophobic, gothic vibe I've grown to love, and pays a brilliant homage to the original Dracula novel written by Bram Stoker. All that changes when Cordelia finally acknowledges her attraction to Dakon (Count Albion), which in my opinion happens much too quickly, and things start getting weird as Jasmine Cresswell starts playing around with the vampire mythology in order to make it her own.
First of all, the vampires in this world come from outer-space. That's right. They are aliens.
Second of all, they can only impregnate virgins.
"It's true, then? The count must drink human blood in order to live?" "Only at ... certain times," Anna said. "For years he has tried to make do with the blood of young boys, but there is no substitute for the blood of a female virgin where my master is concerned." "The blood of men and women is the same - " "No, signorina, it cannot be, and the blood of virgins seems more potent than any other. His people have discovered that they can only produce offspring if their female partners are virgin" (250).
Third of all, all vampire offspring created with humans are male because the coupling is so violent.
"It seems so strange. In your own world, girls must presumably have been born in equal numbers with boys, so what is it about joining with human females that causes only boys to be born?" For a moment, Dakon didn't respond. "Our scientists have concluded that the violence inherent in the act of mating with a human determines that the offspring of the union will always be male," he said. His voice was harsh, and he obviously disliked reminding her of the brutal reality of his nature (302).
Vampires apparently go through this mating frenzy where they lose control to the point of rape. They can also kill by tearing the throat of the person they're mating with. So how do you get a girl?
"Perhaps they have not examined the situation from the correct point of view," Cordelia said. "But it seems to me that if you insure that the mating between a Vam-pyr and a human female is not violent, then the child resulting from that union will be a girl" (302).
So, need a boy child? Use your human wife ill. Need a girl child? Love her tender.
You know what makes this even more disturbing, though? When Dakon and Cordelia (inevitably) have a child - and of course it's a girl - and show her to her vampire grandfather, he's shocked.
ZArymp (lol) shook his head in bewilderment. "Vampire babies are always boys. For four thousand years, no Vam-pyr has ever fathered a female child" (377).
What the flipping-frick. That's got terrifying implications. For FOUR THOUSAND YEARS, vampires have been gleefully and violently ill-using humans, and nobody took a moment to stop and think, "Hmm, maybe we should be subverting the violence that's inherent in the system?" Nobody?
The sex scenes are all pretty terrible, too. Vampires were, historically, an interesting and "safe" allegory of earthly sexuality without totally offending Victorian sensibilities. Cresswell really takes the phallic imagery of a vampire's fangs and runs with it.
His sacs burst instantly, sending mating fluid streaming into the tiny openings he had made in Cordelia's throat. His whole body pulsed with the power of her blood, and her body thrummed with the erotic impact of his mating fluid (370).
When I was living in the UK, I remember watching this really bad TV mini series called Children of the Stones, a horror/gothic about a town being held in thrall to a stone circle of megaliths. It was cheesy, but also kind of endearing as well, because on our weekend day trips, we saw so many small towns that had these megaliths and standing stones, and even though they were years and years in the past, the people in these towns still had so much respect for them.
THE CHINA GARDEN brought back all of those memories. It's a story about a girl named Clare and her mother, Frances. Frances is a nurse but it turns out that she lied a lot about her past. She came from a place called Stoke Raven, with a beautiful and ancient property called Ravensmere, where she was descended from one of the two great families who live there: they Aylwards and then Kenwards. Now that her grandfather is dying, she wants to go back and make things right, but she's reluctant to bring Clare for some reason. Clare, being a teenager, insists on going and is enchanted and disturbed by the mysterious old town and its secretive people.
I don't want to say too much about this book because less is definitely more going in. You don't see too many books being written like this these days: it opens up very slowly and takes its time setting the scenery and introducing you to all the townspeople. I don't think the heroine even really speaks to the love interest until about 30-40% into the book. That kind of slow-burn pacing is basically unheard of these days, with the love interests often kissing well into the first five chapters. Despite that, THE CHINA GARDEN ended up being a surprisingly spicy and steamy read for a YA. I was kind of surprised but also not because Liz Berry also wrote EASY CONNECTIONS and its sequel, which were basically bodice-rippers for teens (replete with dub-con). It just seems to be her style.
THE CHINA GARDEN is beautifully written, subtly magical, and has so many of my favorite tropes: dangerous and slightly unpredictable love interest, a headstrong and difficult-to-deal-with heroine, a small town with big gothic secrets, and a little whisper of magic. Not going to lie, I actually had chills at the end. It was that good. If you enjoy love stories with themes of redemption and inheritance, I think you'll love this book. It's even more magical if you've actually been to one of those small towns with standing stones and mazes. The only reason this isn't five stars is because it took a while to get moving, even for me, and ended up feeling quite front-heavy as a result.
This box set is a collection of Jennifer Blake's Gothic romances, most of which were published under the name "Patricia Maxwell." Unlike her bodice rippers, her Gothic romances are very clean and while they share features of her bodice rippers, such as lavish clothing and architecture porn and icy but misunderstood heroes, they are much more tame and inoffensive - at least in the sexual sense. There are other kinds of WTFery offered by these Gothic novels, as you will see.
BRIDE OF A STRANGER is definitely the most WTF in the collection. Claire is supposed to marry her cousin but ends up catching the eye of a scarred and dangerous rogue who spirits her away to his plantation mansion where all of the freed slaves still reside and practice voodoo. Claire isn't the only one feeling ambivalent about this abrupt marriage as it quickly becomes clear that someone on her new husband's estate is trying to kill her.
I'm a sucker for the "hero in pursuit" trope, so that opening when Justin made his feelings known to Claire and blackmailed her aunt into allowing marriage was, well, amazing. It gave me heart eyes, because I'm a disturbing individual. I also liked the prevalence of voodoo in the storyline, because that was a common trope with bodice rippers set in the Caribbean, so it was like seeing a bit of Jennifer Blake's bodice ripper future trying to crawl its way out through the pages. Likewise, there's a bit of orgiastic naked dancing and animal sacrifice - not a Gothic romance for maiden aunts!
This one was okay. Lillian's father is trying to force her to marry a local preacher and things get awkward when she refuses his suit. The two are riding home together, in awkward silence, when a storm hits, forcing the two of them to take shelter at a place called "The Plantation Inn." The Inn is quite crowded with a number of curious characters who all seem harmless until, of course, Lillian locks eyes with a dark and dangerous individual who sets her heart a-fluttering.
She and the other tenants also quickly find out that a murderous outlaw made his escape from nearby and might very well be among them. Suspicion rises, reaching a fever pitch after several increasingly malicious acts that include smearing someone's destroyed clothes with poop and killing the inn's cat (poor kitty). The parlor mystery set-up makes this book feel a bit different from Maxwell's usual formula of the ingenue getting wrapped up in domestic politics and treachery but I liked it. The ending was a bit confusing, though, and this book was very, very light on romance.
I fully expected to like THE SECRET OF MIRROR HOUSE more than I did, but I felt like I'd read the story before in the form of Dorothy Eden's DARKWATER and Patricia Maxwell's own DARK MASQUERADE. DARK MASQUERADE definitely follows that ingenue-gets-involved formula I was telling you about earlier, but the characters were so flat that I didn't really care about what happened to them, sadly. I wanted to like this way more than I did, but the hot-and-cold hero and wimpy heroine killed this for me. The best thing about this book is the atmosphere.
I averaged out my ratings for this book and came up with 2.8, roughly, which I'll round up to three since the first two books in this collection were quite good. I don't always have the best luck with bundles but I got this one for free and I consider liking 2 of those 3 books a bargain, indeed.
STRANGER AT PLANTATION INN is another one of those old retro gothic romances, but this one has a distinctly Agatha Christie flavor which makes it extra fun. Lillian Newton has been the victim of her father's meddling as he tries to finagle her a husband in the form of the semi-local traveling preacher, George. Lillian, being a feminist and an adventurous spirit, doesn't take kindly to George's sexism-infused gospel, and the two of them are returning home in rather awkward and miserable condition following her refusal.
A heavy rain forces the two of them to take shelter at a place called "The Plantation Inn." Run by an old-fashioned, cozy couple, the inn is peopled with tons of other travelers who are also seeking shelter. A claustrophobic atmosphere settles over the group as they chat, and various fissures and idiosyncracies surface, made ever more sinister as they learn that a murderous outlaw has escaped from nearby.
I liked STRANGER AT PLANTATION INN a lot because as I mentioned before, it has that "claustrophobic" Agatha Christie parlor mystery vibe. The bad guy(s) are also pretty inventive with their nastiness in this book, including tearing up someone's wardrobe and smearing all their ruined clothes with poop (ew) and killing the family pet (*sobs*). The escaped outlaw bit was super cheesy but it definitely added tension to the book, which I liked.
STRANGER AT PLANTATION INN is one of those throwaway-type books where you read them and are entertained, but then immediately forget the details of as soon as you close the cover (or click to the last page of the book, if you're reading a Kindle). I got it in a bundle edition of several of Patricia Maxwell's older Gothic novels and rating wise, it sits snugly in the middle of the three. If you're a fan of Agatha Christie, I think this would be a good introduction to the gothic romance genre for you, but if you're hoping for a more traditional, romantic read, this book is not that.
A lot of gothic romance novels have really similar plots, but with THE SECRET OF MIRROR HOUSE, I had an especial case of deja vu, because it felt like a mashup of two other gothic romances that I read and enjoyed a lot more: Dorothy Eden's DARKWATER and Jennifer Blake's other book, DARK MASQUERADE. That's never a good sign.
The plot is pretty basic. Following a tragedy (the death of her mother), Amelia comes to live with her relatives at Mirror House. Once there, she realizes that they're all pretty awful people who don't seem to want her to be there, and shortly after her arrival, ends up becoming victim to a number of odd and sinister tricks, including being run down in the woods and nearly being left to drown in a swampy lake. Dun, dun, dun.
The "secret" in this case is with regard to why Amelia was invited to stay at Mirror House in the first place, and the strange, masked woman who roves the halls at night like a ghost. I wanted to be more involved in this mystery than I was, but sadly, the twist was very similar to the one in DARKWATER, down to a very similar character trope. I was also really bored for most of this book. There just wasn't enough happening and I didn't care about any of the characters. Reba and Sylvestor were creepy creepsters. James was kind of smarmy. Amelia was bland and a little TSTL. Nelville is the typical Broody McMightBeABadman gothic romance hero, except this being set in Louisiana, he drops a ton of sinister aphorisms that make him sound like a Francis Underwoodesque character who wouldn't be out of place on House of Cards.
I think the best thing about this book is the humid, claustrophobic Southern atmosphere and beautiful writing. It's pretty chilly right now, but I could just picture that swampy heat and the sticky sweat pouring down my neck, and you know that's the mark of a talented writer, being able to set the scene like that. I'm working my way through Jennifer Blake's bodice rippers and gothic romances, and so far I like her bodice rippers more, because I think the temptation with a gothic novel is to be slow in order to draw out the mystery, whereas bodice rippers, as the name implies, are all about the action.
I'm curious if there's a difference between her novels published under the Patricia Maxwell name vs. the Jennifer Blake name, because I really enjoyed the last Blake gothic romance I read, but it was originally a Maxwell title (DARK MASQUERADE). We'll see, I guess!
Maybe if I had forced myself to slog through the remaining 53% I might have found it in me to award this book an extra star. But I couldn't really muster the enthusiasm. I really enjoyed the other book I read by this author, a Gothic called DARKWATER. The premise of SLEEP IN THE WOODS sounded even more intriguing.
Briar is the servant of two wealthy girls seeking husbands. They go to New Zealand to find their matches, bringing Briar with them, living with their aunt. Briar is very ambitious and strives to catch the attention with one of the local boys, but instead, at a masquerade (because #MistakenIdentity!), she ends up in the arms of the dangerous and very wealthy Saul.
Thus compromised, Saul has no choice but to marry her and take her to his home in the heart of Maori country, where the local indigenous peoples are portrayed as ruthless, violent cannibals.
I wanted to like this book. I love Gothic novels, and even though this is as un-PC as all get-out (reminiscent, in a way, of that exploitation film Cannibal Ferox), I am willing to tolerate un-PC content if it a) suits a purpose, b) suits the times, and c) doesn't involve children or animals. But I can't stomach a book that is boring. And boring this book was.
Sorry to give this a bad review, but that's how it goes.
Holy #StealthReads, Batman! It's been a while since I sneaked a book past GR's radar, but I've been so tired lately that I've mostly been napping on public transport instead of reading on it. I finally finished my most recent purse book, and that book was THE DEVIL ON HORSEBACK by Victoria Holt (because you know that with a title like that, I couldn't help but buy it).
Victoria Holt is one of those authors I keep coming back to again and again, even though I have a love-hate relationship with her books. When she's on her game, she is on her game; but she also churns out a fair number of misses. For me, THE DEVIL ON HORSEBACK was one of her misses.
Unlike most of her Gothic romances, which are set in Victorian England, THE DEVIL ON HORSEBACK is set in Georgian England with the French Revolution looming close-by.
The heroine, Minella, is the daughter of a school teacher who has lofty aspirations for her daughter. These aspirations come to a bitter end with her untimely death - especially when the nobleman who was angling after Minella is corralled back into his family's clutches, basically leaving her alone and penniless. Minella has a friend named Margot who is the daughter of a Comte, and she ends up pregnant (out of wedlock). Her angry father sends the two of them away (blackmailing Minella into going by saying that the scandal would threaten her school) until Margot gives birth.
Minella continues to live with Margot and her father, much to the perplexity of their rich friends. She starts hearing whispers that make her uneasy - whispers whose truths are confirmed when the Comte asks her to be his mistress! She is attracted to him despite herself, traitorous body, etc. etc., but cannot give in to such wicked urges because propriety! So she tells him no, because he is married and she is not that kind of woman, etc. etc. How convenient then that the Comte's wife dies shortly thereafter, overdosing on her own medicine! How coincidental! Surely the two are not related, right? RIGHT?
Meanwhile, the French Revolution is happening and stones are thrown at glass houses and people are being attacked and executed. It's really more of a backdrop thing than an actual addition to the setting until the very end, and only when it directly impacts one of the two main characters. This plot twist fails to capture the horror of the French Revolution, however, and is resolved bloodlessly and quickly.
I am disappointed by this book. My friend Naksed said that this book reminded her of a watered down DEMON LOVER, and even though I did not like DEMON LOVER, I think that is true. The plot and the writing were so much better in DEMON LOVER, and if it weren't for how spineless the heroine was and how unrealistic her reactions were to the brutish hero's actions, I would have given it a much higher rating. The wicked Comte had a few good lines:
"When we transgress," he went on, "we must pay for our sins. This is the payment I ask." He took my face in his hands and kissed me on the lips - not once but many times (22)
And,
"I assure you I am the tireless hunter. I never give up until I have my prey" (157)
But mostly, he just came across as a creepy older dude who was obsessed with the best friend of his daughter, at the expense of his still-very-much-alive-until-one-point wife. I spent most of this novel feeling very bored, and that is a very terrible way to feel while reading a book.
Oh man! I have so many THOUGHTS about this book and thank god I didn't have to go through it alone. My friend, Regina Sage, read it with me and I'm glad she did because she warned me about some pretty major triggers that happened towards the end (TW for body horror, including people getting their faces ripped off). I was not expecting a fantasy romance with a prom dress cover to be so DARK.
First of all, I don't think the 3.33 average rating is deserved. But before ACOTAR, I am not really sure people knew what to do with fae romances. Elizabeth May posted about how her Falconer series kind of flopped, because it came out before fae was popular and now it's experiencing a resurgence because people can't get enough faerie smut. I feel like this book falls into the same boat. A romance retelling of Jane Eyre involving the fae, with curses, masks, Tam Lin vibes, and a war of humans versus fae? Sounds very ACOTAR-ish. Except this came out all the way back in 2012.
That said, I can kind of see why people weren't sure what to make of it. It's a very slow burn story. It's one of those stories that's more vibes than it is plot. Jane comes to be a governess to a single dad who has a child who might be part fae. Jane has been cursed by the fae and has to wear an iron mask, because her curse is one of anger, and the mask keeps the magic from lashing out. This experience with fae magic puts her in a unique position to tutor Dorie, but it might also put her in danger. Because as she explores Edward Rochart's castle, she encounters many sinister mysteries that suggest that the castle, and Edward himself, might not be all that they seem.
Until maybe about 60% in, I was all set to give this five stars. I felt like the end petered out a little bit and relied on too much violence to get to the conclusion. How many times does a face have to get ripped off in this book? Because I swear it was at least five. That's like at least four times too many. At least, it was for me. And possibly for the other people who picked this up thinking it was going to be a fun and frothy fantasy romance and instead encountered some Tanith Lee levels of horror.
Actually, I would highly recommend this book to fans of Tanith Lee, because I feel like she also traversed the boundary of whimsical and horrific in her works, too. Like, this isn't dark enough to be outright horror or grimdark but it has many of those elements, just as how even though it's incredibly angsty and has some romantic scenes, it's a little too dark and light on relationship development to be a true fantasy romance. I would argue that the ending is an HFN at best and the story probably could have benefited from a conclusion because after all the horror, it feels way too abrupt.
But I did like this book. I would read more from this author in a heartbeat. It was interesting and unique. I just could have done with like 80% less face-ripping.
THE EDEN PASSION is a literary Dementor: it will suck all of the joy out of your life, leaving you feeling empty and desolate inside. I thought, after reading the two previous books in the serious, that I was adequately prepared for the emotional despair of THE EDEN PASSION, but I was sorely mistaken. THIS OTHER EDEN is a dark, Gothic bodice ripper with a few horrific scenes peppered along to spice up the obsessive love story, and THE PRINCE OF EDEN is a tale of doomed love set amidst a backdrop of petty rivalries and greed for land in the vein of Philippa Gregory's Wideacre trilogy.
THE EDEN PASSION is a different beast entirely.
***WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD***
There are three parts to this novel, which I'm going to describe as parts I, II, and II in the breakdown to follow. Oh, and for the record, this book isn't a standalone. You need to read the first two books in the series, not just for characters and important background information, but also because each book builds off the former, and sometimes you can't appreciate the gloomy doom and horror properly if you don't have the information provided in the previous books. You will have a nebulous sense that something is wrong, and you might suspect, but you won't know why, with that same level of sinking, open-mouthed horror that you would have if you read the other books.
PART I of the book literally opens with the last chapter of book 2, THE PRINCE OF EDEN. After his father's death, John comes to Eden, broken and bedeviled. The occupants are shocked, obviously, not just because his return is unwelcome (it is), but also because he's the spitting image of his father, Edward, who caused quite a scandal with his affair with his brother's wife, and his rather casual selling of Eden-owned land to fund his schools for the poor and underprivileged in London. At first, he is treated as a servant and forced to shovel manure, pending the authenticity of his claim to Eden ancestry, but Harriet Eden, the current lady Eden, has a change-of-heart, and invites him into the castle. Her motives aren't exactly pure, though, and John's entrance to the castle sparks a dark retelling of Oedipus Rex, in nearly every way, and let me tell you, the author knew what she was doing. She even alludes to it, sneakily, by having one of the children (one of John's half-siblings), refer to Sophocles and one of his plays in the schoolroom. Yeah, I see your game.
When the inevitable tragedy happens, PART II begins. A stunned and traumatized John stumbles from Eden and ends up meeting a manic pixie dreamgirl named Lila, who I'm half-convinced is actually Luna Lovegood in disguise (she's the blonde woman on the original 80s cover). Lila is known for being weird, as she makes up stories and talks to her pet cat, Wolfe, and seems to conceive of herself as being a bit mystical and touched with supernatural powers. John and Lila hit it off, and agree to exchange letters. Meanwhile, John ends up going out to pull himself up like his bootstraps but ends up being enlisted into the Crimean War. After being wounded and recovering in a hospital where Florence Nightingale makes a cameo appearance, he goes to India just in time for the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Another tragedy strikes the Indian woman he meets there, Dhari, also in the form of gruesome mutilation, and he ends up taking both her and her son, Aslam, with him out of guilt. Jeez, at this point, I'm thinking, "Are any of the women in his acquaintance NOT going to have anything bad happen to them? Lila is imprisoned in her room by her overprotective parents and John's foster mother, Elizabeth, is brutally raped and beaten by the villain, King Asshat himself.
Part III brings everything full circle. Elizabeth and John reunite and he forgives her for returning to the Oldest Profession in the World. Dhari smilingly steps back as John marries his new, white wife. King Asshat is whipped and sent home in his carriage in disgrace. All the happy people return to a now impoverished Eden Castle, where the madwoman in the attic awaits their return. It begins as it ends, with John coming home, but both Johns are very different people - for better, or for worse.
THE EDEN PASSION was a really intense read and I actually had to set it aside for a week or two around the 200-page mark because there's a scene of self-mutilation in here that's pretty graphic. Likewise, PART II in India is also pretty hard to swallow. The N-word is bandied around a lot, and the hypocrisy of the Christian missionaries is shown with how they say their prayers even as they take advantage of the locals, and Dhari herself was almost a victim to the practice of Suttee, something the ex-missionary who takes her as he pleases tells the table with relish despite her obvious mortification and shame. The portrayal of British Colonial India is portrayed, naturally, with all of the cultural sensitivity of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. There weren't ninja Kali worshipers with scimitars and questionable buffets of leech-filled snakes and monkey brains on ice, but I feel like those could have just as easily been ideas that Marilyn Harris was keeping on the back-burner. You know, just in case all the surprise incest and character tortures weren't enough. I think the last time I read a bodice-ripper that was so dark and so cruel to the characters inside was when I read Parris Afton Bonds's DUST DEVIL. That was another book that also had me needing to set it down, but unlike THE EDEN PASSION, it petered out in the end once the cruel deed was done.
THE EDEN PASSION is not a bad book. It is definitely my least favorite of the three, though (book 2 was my favorite, but I think the first book had the most poetic writing). The quality of the writing and the complexity of the characters pales somewhat here, and I got the impression that Harris was trying to overcompensate for that with more shocking twists and horrific tortures. There's a real Game of Thrones vibe in this book, where the wars and the relationships play a foil to some truly horrific scenes that appear to be done specifically to horrify and scandalize. I couldn't help but wonder what the public at large made of this book when it came out. Was it banned from certain venues? Or, because it was packaged as a romance, did it just end up becoming a best-kept secret that sat on the check-out racks at local grocery stores like a ticking time-bomb of general wtfery?
I don't know, but if you feel like you're too happy in life and want to take yourself down a few pegs, check out the Eden series and enjoy the greatest ritualistic act of literary suffering since embarking upon the Game of Thrones series. Endeavour publishing has been rerelasing these books for Kindle and you can get a fair number of these previously out-of-print books on the cheap, and they don't appear to be censoring out or rewriting the questionable parts like other rereleases, either.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
Bodice rippers have a bad reputation. When people think "bodice ripper," they tend to picture a Technicolor book cover featuring a buxom women swooning in the arms of a shirtless hunk and a plot that contains more cheese than the state of Wisconsin. The book I tricked my romance group into reading certainly fell under that category. But while some of them are awful, there are some genuinely good ones that are either extraordinarily well-researched or else so cracktastic that the anachronisms and politically incorrect terms become, if not amusing then morbidly fascinating. (I encourage anyone interested in exploring bodice rippers for themselves to check out my bodice ripper shelf on Goodreads. Anything 3+ stars is v. good(!), and yes, I do try to discuss trigger warnings.)
The Eden series falls into both the well-researched and the cracktastic camp, which makes them extra special. The series is being rereleased for Kindle (books 1 & 2 are currently free if you have Kindle Unlimited), and Netgalley recently approved me for a copy of book 3 in the series, THE EDEN PASSION. Once I stopped screaming with excitement, I immediately picked up my ***hard cover editions*** of the first two books to binge through. The first book, THIS OTHER EDEN, is more of a traditional bodice ripper, with the hero and heroine coming to blows (literally - and it involves a public whipping) and going through about sixty different kinds of hell, before reuniting in what is more of a satisfactory ending than a truly happy one. It had its flaws, but I loved the detail and the fact that all of the characters are morally grey.
The second book, THE PRINCE OF EDEN, is a family saga - which were quite popular in the 80s, and often turned into the more "unisex" version of bodice rippers. THE PRINCE OF EDEN is about the children of Marianne and Thomas, the main couple in the first book. This book is set several decades later. Thomas is dead, Marianne is an old woman, and their two sons are middle-aged. Edward is a bastard, because despite having the same parents as his brother, he was born before his parents were married due to a technicality (read: marriage!pranks). Out of guilt, Thomas Eden bequeathed to Edward the entire Eden family fortune, as well as the estate. The legitimate son, James, received the title - and that's it. Everything he has is dependent on his brother's good will.
Obviously, there is bad blood about this, and James and his sinister and incestuous servants, the Cranfords (read: Lannisters) are planning a lawsuit with the help of the family lawyer, Sir Claudius. All of them want the Eden money for themselves, and it fills them with Impotent Victorian Rage™ that Edward is going out to the slums of London and using the money to help poor orphans and prostitutes. Edward is an idealist, and, despite seeing the darker side of humanity on a daily basis, painfully naive, cushioned by the wealth and privilege that he takes for granted and gives away freely. When that reality touches him personally with tragedy, he turns to opium for solace, and ends up having an affair with his brother's bride-to-be, Harriet Powels.
There isn't really much in the way of plot in this book, apart from the will-they, won't they matter of the lawsuit. But this book is peopled with such a broad spectrum of intriguing characters that I really didn't care. The Cranfords were so sinister and conniving. James is weak and spineless, but has occasional moments of kindness. Edward wants so desperately to do the right thing but constantly reverts to the sins of the father. Marilyn Harris is really good at making you feel things about her characters, and when bad things happen to them, it hurts. THE PRINCE OF EDEN wasn't as crazy as its prequel, but there were still a few bits of OTT that surfaced, such as baby torture, a woman who "gets off" by riding her horse without underclothes, Mr. and Mrs. Incest, Bad Things Happening in Prisons, and of course, a gritty portrayal of drug addiction, withdrawal, and relapse.
I would have given this five full stars if the ending hadn't disappointed me. I was ready to pump my fist in triumph, but Marilyn Harris yanked away my joy before my outstretched fingers had scarcely brushed it. I can't forgive her for that. I'm a very petty individual, and thieves of joy are the absolute worst criminals in the literary cannon. This is a well known fact.
Apart from that, the Eden series is amazing, and it's on Kindle, so please, please read these books, and tag me in your reviews so I can stalk your updates, because everyone knows that watching your friends read your favorite books is the next-best thing to reading them yourself. :-)
Books like this are why I read bodice rippers. Okay, some of them are bad, and reading them is a meta-experience tantamount to MST3K, where the bulk of the enjoyment is making fun of what a festering pile of fail they are. But on the other hand, some of these vintage delights are genuinely good, on their own merit, and while cheesy and oftentimes un-PC, they tell a damn good story.
THIS OTHER EDEN was recently rereleased for Kindle via Endeavour Press, and so was its sequel, THE PRINCE OF EDEN. THE EDEN PASSION is to be released shortly after - and I know this, because I was lucky enough to receive a FREE copy of the third book in this series for review. You know what that means - a reread of the first book, and a gleeful binge of the second, before dive-bombing into the third. Romance novels are like potato chips: you don't consume just one. YOU EAT THEM ALL. ...Or, failing that, you eat as many as you can before someone rips the bag from you.
THIS OTHER EDEN is set in Georgian England. It opens with the public whipping of a sixteen-year-old girl named Marianne Locke. She's being punished for disobedience to Lord Eden - there are many reasons behind this "disobedience": she witnessed the illegal operations he's holding in his cellar, was too proud for her station, and most bitterly, she dared to refuse his advances. Marianne waits for her fate in a charnel pit, which is where people throw the corpses of dead animals and dead human beings post-slaughter, before being hauled out of that stinking cesspit for public flagellation.
Obviously, this punishment traumatizes her on a mental and physical level, so she's sent to live with her half-sister, Jane. Jane resents her younger sister because she was always the favorite, and sees this as the perfect chance for revenge. She has her sister live in the pantry (and then later a servant's bedroom) and has her perform all the duties of a servant for her and her common law husband. Unfortunately the husband quickly falls for Marianne, and this creates tension. And yet - it's a weird tension, because even though things between Jane and Marianne are tense, they never really seem to overtly hate one another and resort to things like murder, the way characters do in Bertrice Small novels. That's a subtlety that really makes THIS OTHER EDEN stand out: all the characters are complex and none of them are purely good or purely bad.
For example, even though Jane softens towards her sister, she's still quick to sell her out to Lord Eden multiple times whenever she needs the money. And Eden is only too happy to take this blood money. He spends about 80% of the book, plotting and scheming to find ways to get Marianne into bed. (And not just any bed, at one point he attempts the use of a Celestial Bed, which is a very real and ridiculous thing.) At first it's a matter of domination and pride, but then he actually starts to love her - but unfortunately, he realizes he loves her only after he screws up, and at that point he is literally willing to give her anything, even the literal skin off his own back, to have her.
This is a gloomy Gothic behemoth that is the perfect example of the evolving romance genre, when the Gothics of the 60s and 70s began to yield to the infamous bodice rippers of the early 80s. It pulls off both roles with finesse: gloomy castles, smuggling operations, scammy sexologists, muddling and sinister relatives, rape, murder attempts, dens of iniquity, superstitious townsfolk, the French revolution, and so much more. But THIS OTHER EDEN goes one step further, with a hero who is truly selfish and childish, and a heroine who is opportunistic and self-absorbed. This is less a romance than an intricate (and intimate) character study of two truly terrible people who gradually overcome their flaws, as well as a realistic portrayal of class and the entitlement of divine right, and how a character might realistically go about overcoming that for the sake of love.
On my first reading of this book, I gave it 3 stars. I'm not sure what 2013 me was thinking, because this book is really, really good. The lush and vibrant writing alone is worth an extra star. Seriously, I could just swim in the prose of this novel as if it were a warm, dark sea. The atmosphere, story, and wide cast of characters are all unique and compelling. This is definitely one of the better bodice rippers I've read, and probably the best-written one to boot. If you're a fan of epic, atmospheric stories like OUTLANDER, where half the fun is the journey and the delay of gratification when it comes to unresolved sexual tension, you should pick up THIS OTHER EDEN. I don't think it will disappoint.
🎃 Read for the Unapologetic Romance Readers Halloween 2017 Reading Challenge for the category of: a romance set in/near a haunted house 🎃
I finished my Halloween Reading Challenge! FINALLY!
SHORECLIFF is a strange little book. The cover is deceiving, because that old skool gown and misty castle would have you thinking that this is a wallpaper Victorian about some governess who might be in love with a murderer, etc. But no. SHORECLIFF is set in the 1960s (Twiggy is mentioned).
Anita and Charles inherit a crumbly old mansion when one of his relatives kicks it, much to the dismay of some of his other relations, including his cousin and foster sister, Pat. One of the clauses of the will states that Pat gets to continue to live with them, even though the house and the bulk of the fortune goes to them.
Once there, Charles gets the idea to write a book about his ancestress, Amanda Shore, who, according to legend, murdered her husband and then went to France, where she had a beauty treatment that coated her entire face in enamel. This part was confusing to me, because the words the author used made it sound like the enamel was injected into her face, but I suspect that - since this would have been happening in the 1860s (100 years ago, from "today", i.e. the 1960s, according to the cover) - the enamel treatment was actually referring to lead enamel, the popular makeup of the day.
Anyway, Charles starts acting weird and Anita starts seeing what looks like the ghost of Amanda looming around the house. Charles accuses her of sabotage. Anita accuses him of being in love with Amanda and Pat, by turns, and claims that Amanda is coming to get her revenge, etc. Their marriage suffers. There's a psychic who appears and makes ominous comments that for some reason most people seem to take seriously. More stuff happens, then there's a Scooby-Doo style unmasking.
I read this book while drinking wine, and went through two glasses over the course of this book. Wine did not improve the logic of this storyline or the characters' actions (although it actually was a lovely compliment to that dry, sweet, "old book smell"). I see that this author also wrote some novelizations of the vampire soap, Dark Shadows, which helps explain the expositional dialogue and unnecessary melodrama. It was pretty bad. Still, it was not the worst gothic novel I have read - that dubious honor goes to MISTRESS OF THE MOOR. #IRegretNothing
💙 I read this for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' New Years 2018 Reading Challenge, for the category of: Non-Western Setting. For more info on this challenge, click here. 💙
I've only read one other book by Phyllis A. Whitney and I didn't like it, but the idea of a Gothic romance set in Japan was way too good to pass up. I went to Japan last summer for the first time and it was a total culture shock because it's so different from American culture, and I loved learning about the history, the people, and the art. One of the last places we visited was Hiroshima, and given that we learn a distinctly biased version of WWII, it was great to hear it from the perspective of those who lost the war -in a horrific way.
I bring up Hiroshima because WWII plays a key role in THE MOONFLOWER. It's a contemporary gothic - or was, when it was first published in 1958 - and with the War having occurred just over a decade before, it's still very much fresh on every one's minds.
Marcia married a much older man who was a scientist. He went to Japan from his work and came back changed - irritable, haunted, cruel. Then he goes back and she basically stops hearing from him, so Marcia takes her young daughter Laurie and goes to hunt him down in Kyoto. The man she sees there isn't at all glad to see her; he wants her to return, and says all kinds of terrible things to her and their child. Their Japanese neighbors who share their duplex are unfriendly, and the wife of the man who lives there, Chiyo, seems oddly frightened of Marcia and her daughter.
Mysterious and awful things keep happening - ugly and possibly haunted masks, ghostly specters roaming at night, things going missing, dark secrets, and of course, the husband's complete personality change. Marcia is utterly puzzled and wonders what could have possibly happened to give her husband Jerome such stubborn ties to this alien country that is still slowly recovering from the devastating blow of the bomb.
THE MOONFLOWER moves at a slow and grueling pace in typical gothic fashion but the atmosphere more than makes up for it. There are some dated descriptions that seem a little racist, but honestly this is one of the best portrayals of Asian culture for the time that it is written (and even in some contemporary literature I have read, which is sad) that I have ever seen. Whitney was obviously very interested in Japanese culture and had a stake in doing it well. Many of the cultural references are on point, even to this day, and I loved the descriptions of places I've actually been to, like the Kyoto shrines, Nijo Castle, and Miyajima Island (which is one of the most beautiful places ever).
I'd kind of guessed what the twist might be, and it did make a lot of sense. I think people who saw the effects of the Hiroshima bombing and felt responsible had a lot of residual guilt. It completely destroyed the city. I went to the Peace Museum there and was lucky enough to hear some of the survivors speak (they were only babies/young children when the bomb fell) and discuss the effects that it had on them and their families. People react to tragedy in odd and frightening ways, and even though I hated Jerome by the end of the book, I could at least understand why he did what he did.
If you like vintage books but don't want to commit to the horror that is bodice-ripper, this is a good jumping off point. It has the colorful settings and flowery writing that is typical of books written at this time, but is also vivid and surprisingly insightful. I enjoyed it a lot.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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