104
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #249,907 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★☆☆☆
Disturbing tale of dysfunction with graphic details
I was drawn to this because the recommendation on the cover compares it to Jane Eyre. Well, the house is isolated, it's set in the UK, and some of the characters are young girls. There's definitely dysfunction. However, to me that's where any comparison must end. The story weaves back and forth between 2015 and 1939. It's also graphic and violent. This is from p. 294. "The dog was lying on his side...only now there was an oozing crater in his head where there'd once been an eye, and there were strings of flesh and blood spattered across the floorboards and over Lorna's naked toes." If this sounds like your cup of tea, go for it, but from the opening page, when the old lady finds the skull of a bird and prepares to drown herself in the marsh, it certainly wasn't my sort of book. The artwork on the cover is the best part.
