When Elspeth arrives on a remote Scottish island to become nanny to a young child, she hopes to bond with her. Until she learns that, for reasons no one will explain, Mary has not spoken for months.

And the girl’s silence is not the only mystery.

Hypnotic lullabies drift down empty corridors.
Strange dolls appear in abandoned rooms.
And as the nights draw in, darker questions arise . . .

What happened to Mary’s late twin, William? Why did their previous nanny disappear so suddenly?

And is the whistling Elspeth hears at night just the storm outside?

Or is somebody coming for her . . . ?

---

I really wanted to read a gothic novel with a haunting and a twist or two. And I must say this is hitting the spot just right for the spooky season. It reminded me first of Jane Eyre – An autobiography – by Charlotte Brontë, and then of The Turn of the Screw * Henry James (Haunting of Bly Manor).

‘I think if I had to live there that I too might feel the same. It’s always been a place that summons a fertile imagination, all those dim corridors with creaking wood and wind in the chimneys. Too easy to imagine a sound or catch a shadow and turn it into something else.

You hava a new nanny coming to a nearly empty manor house except a sullen house-keeper, an old grandma and a child who was to be her charge. The child’s father died in her infancy, her mother died of an illness and her twin brother fell of a cliff a few months prior. Also her previous nanny ran off with a guy she met to America.

Not all is as it may seem and there are talks in the village about the boy being evil and torturing animals and possibly his nanny’s disappearance being caused by him before he passed.

She smiled, showing a row of even teeth.
I could feel the weight of expectation; the pressure of the house around me, the air trapped in corridors above. And beyond that, somewhere in this maze of rooms, a child whose mouth captured only silences.

I liked the atmospheric feel of the book, the cold winds, the description of the island weather. Welcome to Scotland.

Outside, wrapped in our coats, we walked into a gusting wind that blew in the shriek of gulls and the shushing of waves as the swell rose and receded on the beach. The light was brittle and uncertain, as though captured through glass, and I filled my lungs with the sharp air.

The writing is fitting for the period, with ye old English used in places. I loved the POV of the main character since we get to live through her mystery investigation alongside her.

With each item I picked up, I felt the negative space of William, as if for every object that had belonged to him and been removed, the air was occupied with only its absence. I recalled the conversations I had begun that had not brought more knowledge of him. Yet I could not imagine what mystery might be contained in such reticence.

The haunting is slow to pick up and I would say for the first 200 pages or so, there’s barely any activity other than the nanny digging around for the truth (this is why I took one star off)

A wave came up nearly to our feet and I jumped to avoid it, but for a moment, beside my own reflection, there were not one but two small shadows upon the water. I blinked, looked again, but the wave had retreated leaving only the skin of wet sand. Surely a trick of the light? Yet there remained upon my memory the conviction that the shadow figures had not been the same and that one had been thinner and taller.

The Gothic feel remains:

the sky was a stubborn grey and the rooms seemed to swell with damp; I began to notice new areas of decay, patches in the ceiling that grew drops of water, and a smell of must and mould flowered in the air.

I think the part that interested me the most was what was causing the whistling sounds.

‘A widows’ whistle is blown to summon the dead. That is what it is for, Miss Swansome.’

Good Parts:

• Spooky story in spooky surroundings
• Good mystery
• 1880’s haunting
• Interesting study of grief and bonding over death

Bad Parts:

• You can read the first chapter and the last chapter and not miss a lot.
• Repetitive at parts
• Not truly scary, more atmospheric feel