He firmly stays off the page and we never know what really happens to him other than he writes Catherine to say he's in lurve with a dancer. Anyway, Charles has been shipped off somewhere and if you think there's going to be a big showdown with him at some point in the story you are mistaken. Spoiler alert: they did and it was consensual. Those rumors, as we find out later, involve her beyond vile older sister Catherine and their brother, Charles, having an incestuous relationship.

Lydia Montrose's family leaves Boston to settle in backwater New Oldbury in 1821 thanks to rumors surrounding her family. And while I'm happy to see more Gothic stories offered of late, for the love of all that is holy can we lay off the incest subplots? Because this is the second Gothic I've read in the past month with incest in it.

I cut my reading teeth on Gothics, loving mysteries and female protagonists as I do. If the title of this blog post hasn't clued you in, there is no way I can talk about this book without giving ALL the spoilers, including trigger warnings. If Augusta can’t resist its allure, everything she knows and loves-including her very life-could be lost forever.Buckle in kiddies, Auntie Wendy is about to unload on The Witch of Willow Hall by Hester Fox. When Augusta stumbles across an oblique reference to a daughter of the Harlowes who has nearly been expunged from the historical record, the mystery is too intriguing to ignore.īut as she digs deeper, something sinister unfurls from its sleep, a dark power that binds one woman to the other across lines of blood and time. One hundred and fifty years later, Augusta Podos takes a dream job at Harlowe House, the historic home of a wealthy New England family that has been turned into a small museum in Tynemouth, Massachusetts. Soon, whispers of “witch” dogged her footsteps, and Margaret’s power began to wind itself with the tendrils of something darker. Once there was a young woman from a well-to-do New England family who never quite fit with the drawing rooms and parlors of her kin.Ĭalled instead to the tangled woods and wild cliffs surrounding her family’s estate, Margaret Harlowe grew both stranger and more beautiful as she cultivated her uncanny power. And a deep-rooted female power that sings across the centuries.

The witch of willow hall by hester fox