A weird and bloody ghost story combining the terror of mental illness with body horror that, while set in a gothic world, features a sensibility more at home in the 21st century. Similar in appeal to the intense psychological suspense of Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger mixed with the real-life horror of the domestic abuse and self-harm at the heart of Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects.
Pohlig’s uneven debut fuses romantic comedy and gothic horror in a tale of family trauma ... While repetitive chapters with Iseult and Beatrice break the spell of the Victorian ghost story, Pohlig handles the wry set pieces of ill-fated courtship with aplomb, and the novel eventually gains momentum through a bloody series of twists and turns. Pohlig’s antimarriage plot will interest fans of revisionist gothic fiction.
Unfortunately, the novel is bloody and graphic in a way that sometimes feels gratuitous. Though there are moments of humor and levity, they are rare ... Despite a pitch-perfect final scene, the strange, grotesque novel has too much narrative fluff. Bloody and bizarre.
