Book Review: THE HIDDEN by Melanie Golding

 

Title: THE HIDDEN

Author:  Melanie Golding

Publisher:  Crooked Lane Books

Read: July 2021

Expected publication: 9 November 2021

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2

 

Book Description:

 

One dark December night, in a small seaside town, a little girl is found abandoned. When her mother arrives twenty frantic minutes later, authorities release the pair, believing it to be an innocent accident of a toddler running off.

But when a man is found beaten and left for dead in his apartment and a bedroom is discovered to contain a padlock and--most worryingly of all--children's toys, DS Joanna Harper begins to suspect the little girl on the seafront was not who her mother claimed. Worse, when CCTV footage reveals an image of the pair, Harper realizes she knows the woman almost as well as she knows herself: it's her estranged daughter, Ruby.

Desperate to reach Ruby before the police find her, Harper knows her deception might just cost her everything. But if it means choosing between her daughter or her career, Harper knows there's no question. She'll protect her daughter no matter what. But what Harper doesn't know is that someone--or something--else is searching for Ruby and the little girl, too. Waiting to bring them home . . . once and for all.

Steeped in local legend and exploring the depths of what it means to be a mother, Melanie Golding's newest novel asks how far we'll go to save the ones we love.

What attracted me to this book:

 

I absolutely loved the mix of mystery, folklore and horror in Melanie Golding’s debut novel LITTLE DARLINGS, so I was extremely excited to see what she would come up with in her new novel THE HIDDEN.

My musings:

 

The book begins with a little toddler being found abandoned in a seaside town, only to be claimed a short while later by a flustered woman claiming to be her mother. In a parallel development, a man is found half dead in a bathtub in his apartment, drugged and with a serious head wound. How could these two events possibly be connected? This is a puzzle to solve for DS Joana Harper, the detective we first met in LITTLE DARLINGS, who will soon discover that she has a very personal connection to one of the people involved in her latest case.

 

I admit that the book was off to a bit of a slow start for me, and I was struggling to connect not only the different timelines and events, but also the cast of characters, who were all just a little bit odd. A man performing yoga in front of his window and the young depressed woman who watches him from a nearby apartment and falls in love with him. An old woman who claims that she heard a child playing in the flat upstairs, which belongs to a bachelor living with his elderly mother. Ever so slowly the threads  and multiple POVs were woven together to form a more cohesive picture, and I became more invested in the mystery as it progressed.

 

It wasn’t until about halfway into the book that I realised how cleverly the author had woven multiple elements into her dark tale: some folklore passed down through generation of island folk, some urban myths, a serial killer mystery, a police procedural and some family drama. What had started innocent enough – with characters who all seemed more odd than sinister – soon took a more menacing tone and created an undercurrent of danger and darkness that ultimately completely sucked me in.

 

I love the way Golding uses mythology as the basis for her stories, exploring the possibility that there is an element of truth in the old tales that we choose to ignore or simply deny. And yet a lot is left to the interpretation of the reader, which makes for an intriguing and mysterious read. Like Ruby herself, I felt constantly torn between my brain trying to find logical explanations, whilst the purer, more primitive side of me just wanted to go with the magical elements. Like a child, I felt myself drawn to the folk tales Golding includes in the opening to her chapters, and it awakened the inner child in me, listening in fascination to an old person sharing a whispered fairy tale.

 

Summary:

 

In summary, if you enjoy old folk tales that blend into reality, creating a much deeper and darker mystery than your average police procedural, then you can’t go wrong picking up THE HIDDEN. Be assured that the book picks up pace after the first 1/3 or so, and all the seemingly disjointed threads will weave together to form an intriguing tale. I have been intrigued by stories of selkies and island folk since childhood and loved the way my rational brain fought my more primitive emotional side the whole way – and I am still thinking about some aspects of the book long after reading it. Intriguing, mysterious and dark.

 

 

 

Thank you to Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

Book Review: THE DEAD GIRLS CLUB by Damien Angelica Walters

Title: THE DEAD GIRLS CLUB

Author: Damien Angelica Walters
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Read: November 2019

Expected publication: 10 December 2019

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

A story in the vein of A Head Full of Ghosts about two young girls, a scary story that becomes far too real, and the tragic--and terrifying--consequences that follow one of them into adulthood.

Not putting any more of the blurb here as it gives too much away (in my opinion) - look it up on Goodreads if you like.

My musings:

Teenage girls. Witchcraft. An urban myth. A mystery that spans decades. Sound good? Well, let me put a personal disclaimer right at the beginning, because if you have read the blurb and are expecting a supernatural thriller full of hauntings and ghosts and things that go bump in the night, you may come away disappointed.

For me, THE DEAD GIRLS CLUB was more a coming of age story than a ghost story, and such was its appeal. If you are a woman, then you have been a teenage girl once, and you may or may not have gone through the “witchy” phase, a time in a girl’s life when the supernatural has an irresistible draw for you. The book is basically about four twelve-year-olds who become obsessed with the myth of the “Red Lady”, a bloodied ghost of a woman accused and cruelly slaughtered for apparently being a witch. Her ghost is now rumoured to make her terrifying comebacks to seek revenge and affect justice by filling her victims’ mouths with dirt and suffocating them. Soon the story takes over the girls’ lives and affects their friendships, until one fateful night one of the girls disappears ....

Walters tells her tale through two timelines and the eyes of Heather – then an almost teen, now an adult who is still looking for answers. Personally, I liked young Heather a lot more, and thought the author did a good job portraying the friendship dynamics between the four girls and the effects of mass hysteria that lead to an inevitable disaster. I also appreciated the author’s premise of a traumatised and abused young girl using a story about a supernatural phenomenon as a coping mechanism, which has been the topic of many a good tale (thinking Renee Denfeld for example). As the girls get deeper and deeper into the story of their terrifying witch, they experience things that they cannot fully explain rationally. Having gone through that phase as a child (after the death of my mother, i.e. also triggered by trauma), I could really see myself in those frightened children! I loved the inclusion of the urban myth in the story, and the way it came to life through the girls’ ever growing terror.

Adult Heather was a different thing altogether. I’m not sure how this person functions in life, because she obviously has some serious problems. Her voice was so manic and disjointed that it made for exhausting reading! This in itself was not a problem, because I imagined that Heather may be experiencing some mental health issues related to the incident in her childhood. However, without giving anything away here, the final conclusion and explanation did not fully satisfy me and left a lot of questions unanswered. I am very conscious of spoilers here, so I won’t go into detail except to say that the police investigating the missing girl’s disappearance must have been very inapt in their job by overlooking some very essential clues and facts – sorry, I just didn’t buy it. Cynical crime reader here! So whilst I was not too cut up about the lack of haunting (as some other readers in our buddy read group reported), the die-hard crime reader in me felt a bit let down in the end.

Summary:

All in all, it was the “then” section of THE DEAD GIRLS CLUB that swept me along in its tide looking for the answers, eager to see how the girls fared. If you are interested in friendship dynamics between young girls and the psychological aspects of coping with trauma, then you will appreciate the author’s keen observations about tween friendships and that transition period between childhood and adulthood that leads to fear magnifying through mass effect as the girls are trying to deal with things they don’t fully understand.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Crooked Lane Books for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.