5 Stars
Taking care of the town’s very own Lizzie Bordan is the last
job Kit McDeere wants, but since her last home care giver position ended in her
being the accused, she doesn’t have a whole lot of job prospects. So to the site
of a triple murder she reluctantly goes to fill the shoes of the previous caregiver
who disappeared into the night. Kit can certainly understand why her
predecessor might have abandoned her post in a house where fifty-four-year-old
blood stains still reside on the carpet. But the personal belongings that still
occupy her room is puzzling and a bit unsettling, though not nearly as much as
the strange noises and unexplained motion coming from a mute invalid’s room in
the middle of the night.
Hand taps and a typewriter are Kit and Miss Hope’s only means of communication so when the elderly and disabled ostracized socialite offers to confide in Kit the decades old mystery that still haunts her and the town, Kit quickly gets drawn in and so did I.
To me, this is one of those mystery gems. It captures the elements
of gothic and offers an intriguing collection of curious characters who might
also be suspects in the creepy going-ons at Hope’s End in an engaging suspense
story that’s well paced with many twists and reveals that keep you guessing and
reevaluating what exactly is going on both in 1929 when the origional murders
took places as well as in the novel’s 1983 present when Kit arrives.
The setting is done well, both the subtle cultural references to 1983 sprinkled in the descriptions, never forced or shoved down the reader’s throat, and the dilapidated cliff-side mansion tilting into the Maine coastline and crumbling from the weight of its secrets, a symbolic manifestation of its occupants of outcasts whose broken lives of repressed traumas have them tilted on their own axis. Meanwhile, Miss Hope’s 1929 typings provide a story within the story as she relates the house’s sordid history, a gothic gilded age soap opera.
Both decades emit vibes of Poe and Hitchcock and if Netflix hasn’t scooped up the rights to this one for Halloween, then they’re sorely missing out because it would come to life even more on screen.
This was an easy five stars. I didn’t even have to think
about what to rate it as I enjoyed it right down to the final page. It’s one of
those books where you savor the whole journey even as you are drawn into the mystery
that has you turning pages to gather more clues and try to solve the
who-done-it.
GOODREADS
*Title purchased from Barnes & Noble. All reviews written by Book-Bosomed Book Blog are honest opinions.
~Also by the Author~
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