Published By: HarperCollins
Pages: 384
Released On: 10/10/2024
Four hundred years separate them. One book binds them.
Glasgow 2024: Clem waits by her daughter’s hospital bed. Erin was found on an idyllic beach in Fynhallow Bay, Orkney with catastrophic burns and only one memory: her name is Nyx.
But how did she get these burns? And how did her boyfriend end up burned alive?
Orkney 1594: accused of witchcraft, Alison Balfour awaits trial. The punishment? To be burned alive.
Separated by four hundred years but bound by the Book of Witching, two women stand imperilled. Can they unlock a centuries-old mystery? And will Fynhallow Bay give up its secrets before someone else dies?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
This is an absolute spectacle of a book. A triumph. A glittering, powerful, extraordinary tour de force of a book. Quite simply C.J Cooke has created a masterpiece.
I don’t think I’ve read any of her books before, but I do have a copy of A Haunting in the Arctic that I will read at some point (as she says the same for all the other 1,200 books she owns).
It is mainly set between 1594 and 2024, with a couple of very short scenes in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
I am often iffy about alternative points-of-view but contradicting myself, I do enjoy alternative time periods. I love them individually but I also love the comparisons. I love a historical novel so I think that comes into play here, and as a fan of historical novels I enjoyed those sections a bit more. But the modern scenes are just as fascinating and well written, I just like being nosy about time long past.
Both time periods start with a bang and it instantly grips you. It’s a historical novel obviously, but there’s also bits of a thriller in it and I thought that worked really well. It can be hard to weave two very different time periods together seamlessly but she’s managed it here, and they’re both as enjoyable as the other. I wasn’t sure at first how the two time periods linked, but she kept dripping in clues here and there which meant I was working it out like a puzzle.
I love books about witchcraft, until I remember these things actually happened. How men were barely in trouble for unexplainable things, but if a woman so much as looks at the wrong person, then they’re clearly a witch and sentenced to death. It’s fascinating and engaging but quite anger-inducing too. It shows this real power struggle, that if a man couldn’t explain something, or if a woman was more powerful then them, then it had to be witchcraft.
I didn’t realise that this, at least the old scenes, is based on a real story and I got lost in a Google black hole reading up on it. Mainly because there’s a character called Patrick Stewart and I kept imagining the X Men would appear.
It is seamless writing, and addictive, taking me away from any other job other than reading it. Which meant I devoured it within a matter of hours, so desperate I was to get back to it when I put it down. This led to an exhilarating but intense reading experience, but I think that adds another layer to the storyline, and I would, if you can, absolutely recommend reading it in such a way that you get utterly absorbed by it.
Books By Your Bedside 