“When we first came here, I told him this house had secrets. I warned him. And he flew into one of his rages and forbade me ever to speak if such things again. Promised to cast me out if I did. Seems no sense in changing that now.”

This is a creepy gothic tale of a 17th century Hall and sheep farm on the moors of Yorkshire. The plot is worthy of a Victorian sensationalist novel with its dark secrets and melodramatic endings. All the characters are keeping dark secrets that could ruin them all...

The story is told from the alternating first-person perspective of the Mistress of Scarcross Hall and the third person perspective a shepherd that joins them one spring. As the year progresses we have ghostly presences, ancient coins, animal slaughtering, secrets aplenty and more than one accusation of witchcraft. But what will Winter bring?

Some very atmospheric prose in this one.

“I’ve had blood on my hands ever since. I’m elbow deep in a thigh, viscous caul of it. Though I’ve never sweated and screamed in my own childbed, I know life and death better than most women. And now, as ever, I’m mindful of my mother. It happens every time I birth a lamb - the weighted pause before the newborn’s first breath, like a clock’s final turning before the hour’s strike, and I always think the same thing: how the moment of birth, of new life, so often means the death of something else.”


However, the plot wavered a little for me and I was not a fan of the secret that was revealed. Neverthe less a good gothic read and there is nothing wrong with that.

More Gothic than merely ghostly this is recommended for fans of [a:Daphne du Maurier|2001717|Daphne du Maurier|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1422444467p2/2001717.jpg].