Blog Feed

‘She searches for ways to stop feeling so lonely you fear your brain will melt and your heart will stop and your skin will never be touched again. She searches for ways to make herself feel better. The online forum has been a lifeline. A lifesaver. She can chat to counsellors when she needs to or other women who struggle with similar issues. Every week she receives a piece of advice to help her on the road to recovery or, as she calls it, the road to normality. The path to living a life.’

Blue makes a decision to deal with her unresolved grief and trauma with a residential course she sees advertised when she’s at a low ebb. At Hope Marsh House participants are offered counselling, art therapy and meditation with married couple Molly and Joshua Park. Blue has been struggling for a long time, culminating in the death of her mother with whom she had an uneasy relationship. However her grief journey begins with the loss of her stepfather Devlin, a rotund man with a fondness for kaftans and a talent with tarot. His own skills are based in clever observation, carefully worded open questions and more than average perception, but in Blue he recognises something he isn’t. A lonely child with strong, natural,psychic abilities. Prior to meeting Devlin, Blue’s mother has managed a rather haphazard upbringing at best with choices for Blue that are based in her own problems and inadequacies rather than what’s best for her child. Blue has been home-schooled but any learning was provided by magazines, television and whatever books Blue could lay her hands on. As a result she had no friends and was thought of as weird by the kids nearby. Her mother is equally isolated, not helped by the fact they move constantly. What exactly are they running from? So, Devlin’s attention is welcomed by both mother and daughter. Losing him to a heart attack was devastating and Blue became parent to her heartbroken mother, taking responsibility for her mum’s worsening mental health, the family’s income and single-handedly running Devlin’s mediumship business. Maybe it will take a place like Hope Marsh House to deal with the lonely and exhausting rut Blue finds herself in? It will be kill or cure….

‘And how long have you had your … talents?’ he said. Blue didn’t know what to say. Was hitting a saucepan with a wooden spoon a talent? Was babysitting a toddler in a dry bath whilst her mother cried herself to sleep a talent? She could wash her own clothes in the steel kitchen sink, she could heat soup and tins of beans, she could sing all the words to ‘May the Circle Be Open’. Is this what the strange man meant? She was five years old. She didn’t know.’

The author tells Blue’s story using different timelines: one gives us the present and focuses in on the retreat at Marsh House, while the others are in flashbacks to Blue’s life before her trip and further back in vignettes of her childhood. The flashbacks give us the building blocks of Blue’s personality and the strange abilities she has. She is a little girl simply longing for love and care, we can see this from the way she blossoms if praised by Devlin. Even more than that, the most powerful thing Devlin does is seemingly very simple – when Blue comes off stage, Devlin simply asks ‘are you ok, lass’? These four words mean more to her than anything else because they bypass the person she is on stage and the money her gift can make them and instead asks how she is. He knows and acknowledges what this gift costs her and how arduous a whole show can be, but mainly it’s just a dad checking in on his daughter. It means a lot to Blue, who has probably never been asked if she’s ok before. No one has ever cared enough. It is his care of her that she misses so deeply. I wondered if there were elements of personality disorder. Does Blue know who she is? When Devlin lives with them she’s at her happiest, but I was confused about her relationship with the other two children who live with them – Bodhi and the baby. They seem to be there, but she rarely relates to them. In fact she actively seems to avoid them and almost looks past them if they appear in her eye line.

Other short sections of the book include a story about a loving married couple who haven’t been able to have children, but look after a little girl who lives in a nearby flat with her elder brother. Unfortunately he is a drug addict and the couple, James and Marie, provide that stable family unit for Jessica. They dread something happening to Jessica’s brother because she could then be taken away from them. I knew that this couple related to Marsh House in some way, but I wasn’t sure how. Why does Blue keep hearing the same three girls names, Jessica, Eleanor and Lauren? Who is the strange long haired girl that appears in Sabrina’s room and opens the door when they’re not there. When she appears Blue starts to feel sick and a feeling of dread comes over her, a couple of times she comes close to passing out. The apparitions also have a way of spoiling her food, making it smell like rotten eggs or rubbish bins. They want to be noticed, but what are they trying to tell her?

The retreat itself is disturbed by a storm and the nearby river bursting it’s banks, threatening the house itself. Instead of the therapy they’re supposed to be receiving Blue and the other able bodied participant Sabina, help Mr Park with unblocking debris from the bridge to help the river flow on it’s normal path. The only other resident is Milton, an older man who uses a wheelchair and seems weakened by a lung disease that causes coughing fits. He’s been to the retreat several times, but seems incredibly grumpy with Molly and her husband. He also avoids any of the activities and even rebuffs Molly’s late night cocoa ritual. Is he just one of life’s misanthropes or is there more going on? Obviously, as a therapist, it’s Molly I’m fascinated with. I’ve been through a major bereavement and have run courses like the ones Molly advocates using a combination of meditation and group therapy using creative writing and art. I found her manner with the participants overwhelming at times. Even before the flood interrupted the normal flow of things there was a boundary issue that I couldn’t put my finger on. As time went on I realised the couple had no children, so who is the little girl in the picture that’s hidden in their own private sitting room? Who is the girl that Blue can see, if no children have lived there? Molly seems to mother her guests. It’s difficult to create clear boundaries when working in your own home and especially when participants are also eating with you and staying overnight. However, there’s something about the way Molly nurtures her clients that feels off. There’s a power imbalance at play, almost as if she is the parent and they are children. It’s this element in her personality and the care she gives that Milton seems to resist or even reject outright. Blue is particularly susceptible to her methods, because she has never had a nurturing mother figure. I felt protective towards Blue (my own maternal instinct at play) and my instinct was telling me she needed to keep her wits about her. The author created a sense of impending doom and as the worst of the storm hit it felt like a warning.

I don’t want to reveal any more, because I think the the story unfolds at the right pace and the truths are revealed slowly. The revelations come in both timelines, as Blue unearths the truths about her mother Bridget by looking through archived newspapers in the library. The secrets come out as if they’ve always been there in Blue’s mind, she just needed something to unlock the door. There will be moments at Hope Marsh House where you wonder what’s going on, placing you in exactly the same position as our main characters. The reader discovers the answers when the characters do so we feel their disorientation, confusion and fear. There were one or two moments that were genuinely terrifying! I enjoyed the growing bond between the three guests at Marsh House, something that Blue has never had before and exactly what she needs. I stayed up late to get to the end and I wasn’t disappointed, although it did lead to some disturbing dreams that night. This was a really great read with a perfect balance between psychological thriller and haunting, gothic tale.

Published Jan 18th by RAVEN Books

Meet the Author

Rebecca lives in the West Country with her family and their cat. She has written two best-selling novels under the name Rebecca Tinnelly: Never Go There and Don’t Say A Word, both published with Hodder.