What a luxurious experience compared to my last read, The Kind Worth Killing, which I thought didn’t work at any level. Picking this up next was absolutely perfect.

The interiority of our nameless bride and narrator is wonderfully rendered with excellent prose. A world wind chance meeting, rapid courtship, and bride entering what feels reminiscent like a Bluebeards Bride scenario. She is then harangued and tormented by the precedes of Rebecca in her new home, as well as her housekeeper, who attended her from a very early age. And all the while the gothic mystery of what happened to Rebecca additionally hangs over the household.

This is dripping with atmosphere and somehow makes the gaslighting and emotional abuse of a woman feel both tense and horrific, while also making her viewpoint absolutely riveting reading just from her actual voice coming through the prose. It is her story and she’s telling it from the future, which puts a spin on things, for me. So much could happen even after the end based on what we know of them.

Because it’s her viewpoint her husband reflects her portrait back at her and she is constantly analyzing, often coming to the wrong conclusions, about how her husband thinks and feels about her and his late wife. Then, the further tormenting by the housekeeper stokes her fears and further drives her into a corner.

The character arcs are very interesting to me, too. Rebecca receives one, though long dead. As does our narrator. Initially she is quite cowed and falls to pieces at every problem but she slowly begins to straighten her spine and come into herself. The fact that she, at an old age is writing the story allows for her to be very wise and knowing and sharp and observant, while also embodying the qualities of the young very well. It feels like a true accounting because of the revelations, but it also keeps an interesting blind spot.

Her husband, we can reasonably assume is most likely not a good person; especially by the end. But she still sees him from a rose coloured view, which suggests things about their future. But also embodies the time period and youth and young love and the kind of intimacies that bind, nothing to do with the physical whatsoever. I found the plot reveals to be engaging and fun and well executed. Her reaction, especially from the lens of a young bride, quite believable.

As with Rebecca herself,similarly she felt well realized. Some components cooperated between widower and housekeeper and others, some we also can surmise have been painted or coloured by our young, now (presumably) old, narrator. Every character is fractal and that’s what makes them interesting. As with every element in the book there is an anticipation to know more about absolutely everything. It’s wonderfully handled. Even the end had me at the edge of my seat, despite guessing the twists and turns on the round I was then rounding, it’s a wonderful experience just being on it and getting there in such a vehicle as is this book.

And at the end we don’t really know everything about any of the characters, probably least of all our narrator. But I’m also shamelessly simultaneously curious and questioning of everything first person. How much can be trusted. We couldn’t finger our new bride, though things occur that would put any number of people in prison. Why is it being told now? Who benefits from such a story. The meta aspects are interesting long after it ends, and I always appreciate that.

Otherwise, it’s just gothic suspense at its best. Horror? Not so much, I think. But the atmosphere, the characters, the plot, and the stark nature of who people are, or how we perceive them to be, is all here and I doubt done any better. Absolutely loved it.