A terrifying story of ghosts and grief, perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and Henry James The Turn of the Screw, in award-winning author Lisa Heathfield's first adult novel.
Clara and her younger brother Stephen are taken by their father to stay with their aunt and uncle in a remote house in the hills as their mother recovers from an accident. At first, they see it as a summer to explore. There's the train set in the basement, the walled garden with its secret graves and beyond it all the silent loch, steady and waiting.
Auntie has wanted them for so long - real children with hair to brush and arms to slip into the clothes made just for them. All those hours washing, polishing, preparing beds and pickling fruit and now Clara and Stephen are here, like a miracle, on her doorstep.
But the reality of two children - their noise, their mess, their casual cruelties - begins to overwhelm Auntie. The children begin to uncover things Auntie had thought left buried, and Clara can feel her brother slipping away from her. This hastily created new family finds itself falling apart, with terrifying consequences for them all.
Such Pretty Things is a deeply chilling and haunting story about the slow shattering nature of grief, displacement, jealousy and an overwhelming desire to love and be loved.
***
Clara sees the trees sticky with sunlight. 1
***
(@TitanBooks, 13 April 2021, 304 pages, ebook, copy from the publisher via # NetGalley and voluntarily reviewed)
***
***
This is a new author for me. Such Pretty Things creeped and freaked me out in a good way. I'll be checking out more of the author's work. I thought this book was great. The comparisons to Henry James and Shirley Jackson are spot-on. The remote house the book is set in is the perfect place for sinister events to happen but you're lulled into a false sense of security in the early chapters. Auntie seems so nice and she cares so much. She can't do enough for her two wards. She's even made them clothes. And if they don't wear the clothes she spent hours sewing and make too much noise, well Auntie might get mad and we don't want that to happen. The menace is this book is slow-burning and you're never quite sure if it's really there until the last couple of chapters when the menace punches you in the face. This is a terrific read.
