I have read all three books in the Jennet trilogy: “The Haunting of Thores-Cross,” “Cursed: A Ghosts of Thores-Cross Short Story,” and “Jennet: Now She Wants the Children.”
These are stories that have and will hang with me for a long time, mostly because of the characters, but also due to the world-building in one of my favorite places on earth: Yorkshire. The author is, I believe, a native of that part of the world. I’m sure that helped give these tales their authentic flavor. I visited there once. I felt for myself the antiquity, danger, history, and romance of the moors.
Where “Thores-Cross” was at times "shiver the back-of-the-neck" creepy, Jennet came at me full-barrel (thanks to Jennet herself), immersing me in the customs, dialect, and atmosphere of the Yorkshire moors from 1936 to present day. There are many subtle details of life among the Yorkshire folk, from making corn dollies, appeasing the Corn Spirit, to the floating blue lights (bog-gasses) which I found particularly fascinating. There is a scene where a body is exhumed from the peat on the moors: having seen an exhibit of mummies and preserved bog bodies once, I visualized this so clearly.
Jennet, still swirling around in the aether with her two dead “babbies,” has not lost one iota of rage over what was done to her. Frankly, I never blame her, although I could see how this obsession was not serving her or the children.
She sees an opportunity to stick her babes into two modern-day girls, forever stealing and replacing their spirits, as a way for her children to live again.
The repeated attempts to possess the modern-day girls was quite vivid and heartrending. I so felt for the two mothers, who pretty much fought this battle on their own. In fact, I noted that it was the women, generally, past and present, who recognized and accepted the threat, and who risked their lives to defeat it.
Who wins this war? Jennet, or Emma & Ruth? Jennet, or Ma Ramsgill and her female helpers? With a Jennet book, you never know till the very end.
Highly recommended for all the Anglophiles out there, the pagans, the spell-casters, the believers, those who have seen or felt otherworldly things, and those who simply love a cracking story that never releases your imagination, from page one to the end.