Thursday 9 May 2019

Book Review: STONE MOTHERS by Erin Kelly

Title: STONE MOTHERS
Author: Erin Kelly
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Read: April 2019
Expected publication: out now
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2


Book Description:


'The Victorians used to call their mental hospitals stone mothers,' I say. 'They thought the design of the building could literally nurse the sick back to health.'

Marianne grew up in the shadow of the old asylum, a place that still haunts her dreams. She was seventeen when she fled the town, her family, her boyfriend Jesse and the body they buried.
Now, forced to return, she can feel the past closing around her. And Jesse, who never forgave her for leaving, is finally threatening to expose the truth.

Marianne will do anything to protect the life she's built; the husband and daughter who must never know.

Even if it means turning to her worst enemy...


But Marianne may not know the whole story - and she isn't the only one with secrets they'd kill to keep.

My musings:


I absolutely adored Erin Kelly’s book HE SAID SHE SAID, so imagine my excitement when I won an ARC of her latest book!

The book is being told from the POV of three different characters and three very distinct timelines. Starting in the present, we hear from Marianne, who has had to give up her job in order to spend more time helping her sister look after their mother, who has advanced dementia. To surprise her, her husband has bought them a unit in the historical building of the Nazareth Mental Hospital, now a modern apartment block for the wealthy. He thought she would be pleased, and her horror of setting foot on the property surprises him. What lies in Marianne’s past that makes her so reluctant to return to her old hometown of  Nusstead?

STONE MOTHERS is yet another book that will go on my list of great settings this year. The Nazareth Mental Hospital is a brilliant and eerie setting – what can possibly bring more chills than an abandoned asylum with a dark past? I loved exploring the old brick building in my mind, wondering its corridors with dread and fascination alike. Kelly has a way with words that really brought this setting to life for me!

The one thing I wasn’t totally fond of was the timeline here. It’s one of those books where all the main characters share a deep dark secret, and everything revolves around this secret, only that we are not privy to finding out what it’s all about. I felt like the one person in the crowd that has no idea what everyone is talking about – too close to real life, lol. Without that knowledge, it was difficult initially to understand the characters’ motivations, which at times seemed a bit farfetched and extreme to me. It wasn’t until the timeline switched to Marianne’s teenage years that we get to find out what all the fuss was about and things started making more sense.


Of all the characters, I liked Helen’s story the best and could have read much more about her youth. She was such a complex character, and her story was so compelling! I also felt a lot more connection to teenage Marianne than to her present day self, and could have spent the entire book walking the dark corridors of the abandoned asylum. One thing I really appreciated about the different timelines was the way the characters all ended linking up, and the threads connecting, and little details coming into focus that I may otherwise have overlooked.


Summary:


STONE MOTHERS is a slow, character driven story with a brilliant atmospheric setting created by a master storyteller. Even though I struggled initially with the format of the book, it ended up an enjoyable read and Helen’s story especially evoked a lot of emotions. Lovers of atmospheric settings will really appreciate this one, as it was quite unique!


Thank you to Hachette Australia for the free copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

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