The Wildling Sisters by Eve Chase #thewildingsisters @eve.chase.author #gothic #atmospheric #sisters #englishmanor #gpputnamssons #chesapeakememoriallibrary @absltmom

Today I bring you a review of the hauntingly beautiful book entitled The Wilding Sisters. If you are a fan of the Gothic feel of novels, the atmospheric pull they often have, then this book would be just right for you. If you like to explore family, their relationships, the bond that sisters oftentimes feel then within the pages of this book those things can be found.

Welcome to Applecote Manor in the Cotswolds. This is a lovely English home that has housed families who have lost and found love, relationships, and the sadness that secrets often leave in their wake. We meet two of the families who have resided and now reside there.

The Wilde sisters arrive in the summer of 1959 to a world that might offer them an escape. Their mother had left them to the care of their aunt and uncle who five years previous had suffered the disappearance of their beloved daughter, Audrey. The house seems mystic, their aunt and uncle seem to be caught in a tunnel of hopefulness that soon Audrey would reappear and their lives would return to the before. The four Wilde sisters come to this home with its secrets and its tragedy hanging over its head. Yet, they have one another and then two boys come into their lives and the story drifts to their interactions, some with grave consequences. It is, for the sisters, a time of growing, of coming awareness of who they are, a time of trepidation and unknowing.

Almost a half century later, a young mother falls in love with the house which is now vacant. She begs her husband for it but as she finds out there are many things lying underneath both her soon to be home and the fact that she is competing with her husband’s dead wife for his love and the love of a daughter that had been born to the dead wife.

Will this house and its history bring them together or will it be the downfall of two families separated by fifty years?

This was a lovely tale, made more so because not only is the setting so beautifully detailed, but also the love and loss one experiences when there is a lack of closure to tragedy. It’s a haunting tale told through the hearts and minds of its characters and definitely recommended to those who so enjoy mystery, imagery, and most of all family.

and here’s the author…

Eve Chase is the pseudonym of a journalist who has worked extensively across the British press. She always wanted to write about families – ones that go wrong but somehow survive – and big old houses, where family secrets and untold stories seed in the crumbling stone walls.
She lives in Oxford, England with her husband and three children.