Published By: Quercus
Pages: 368
Released On: 25/04/2024
A MISSING WOMAN
When Ailsa Reid becomes the subject of a trial by media after an incident at the school where she works, she escapes to the comfort of her grandparents’ house in Fife. But she arrives to find her grandmother, Moira – recently diagnosed with dementia – has gone missing, and her grandfather, Rupert, gravely injured.
AN ABANDONED CHILD
Desperate to ensure Moira’s safe return, Ailsa must rely on the help of her estranged mother, Rowan, who abandoned her at birth. Tensions simmer between the two women as they attempt to piece together the lead-up to Moira’s disappearance.
A TERRIBLE CURSE
But in order to move forward and find Moira, both Ailsa and Rowan must go back to the beginning; to a story about witches burned on the hill above the Reid house centuries ago, and the curse laid upon the women that came after. Can they break the bonds of history in time to save their family? Or will the Reid curse be their undoing?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Quercus for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I interviewed Victoria (name-twins!) for my blog but I admit this is the first of her books I’ve actually read, but what a way to start!
I must say, Victoria descriptions of grandparents is gorgeous. I lost my first grandparent when I was 8, and my last when I was 23. And I miss the warmth and love and safety that they provide. It can be hard to capture that in a book, but she’s done exactly that. She’s captured that nostalgia and I was really absorbed. I loved the grandparents before we even met them.
The book is split into a couple of points-of-view. We have the present scenes, set in a modern time, from our protagonist Ailsa. We also have scenes set just before WW1, from Elspeth’s viewpoint. I didn’t know who she was at first, and I thought she might have been Ailsa’s Grandmother but as a young woman but we learn her name is Moira. So that was intriguing. They were both equally as exciting and interesting as each other, and I would have gladly read an entire book set in the past scenes. It threw up a lot of questions. I think my heart was more into the past scenes, but I think that’s just because I enjoy reading about the early 190s, big houses, governesses and whatnot. We do also get another viewpoint from the 60s towards the latter half of the book, but I won’t spoil what that has to do with. Victoria has managed to balance the viewpoints, giving us enough of the past to understand the present, and enough of the present to remind us of the past. Beautifully done.
We have a range of characters: Ailsa, Rowan, Moira, Cordelia, Elspeth, Selina – and they’re just the women! Men include fathers, husbands, brothers, sons. Forgive me, but this is the women’s story. They were so brilliantly written I felt like I knew them, that they were friends or relatives, and some of it was hard to read, as it felt like it was happening, in a way, to me.
There are some difficult topics, such as domestic violence, death, loss, grief, alcoholism, dementia, abuse, abandonment, pregnancy issues, sexuality, power struggles etc. It doesn’t get bogged down in the negative, but instead she uses it as a way to frame the good times.
As someone with a chronic illness, I really liked the inclusion of a character with a disability (Selina), and not just as an afterthought or a novelty, a fully fleshed-out main character who just so happens to have a disability, rather than it being her only characteristic.
I suppose one might describe it as a feminist story. It is definitely a powerful one at that, showing different generations of Reid women and the strength they’ve had to find in the face of violent obstacles over the years.
There’s a lot of thrillers about nowadays, and I have read a lot of them, and they all have generally similar features which can be quite repetitive. But this had something a little extra. I can’t pinpoint it exactly. Perhaps because it wasn’t ‘just’ a thriller. It had a sense of the romance genre, historical, psychological thriller, fantasy. It hooked me from the first page and I just raced my way through it.
It’s like a story within a story within a story. Which could have been confusing and complicated and unnecessary but Victoria has managed to weave them all in so well that I can’t think of a better way of telling this story.
Books By Your Bedside 