The Darkwater Bride

by Marty Ross, Clare Corbett (Narrator), Donal Finn (Narrator)

Late Victorian London. When the most respectable of Scottish businessmen is pulled, dead, from the Thames, his daughter is drawn into an investigation which reveals a whole world of secrets and corruption and leads all the way to the tragic truth behind the ghostly legend of The Darkwater Bride.

An epic drama combining the genres of the Victorian mystery thriller with the equally classic Victorian mode of the ghostly tale.

©2018 Audible, Ltd (P)2018 Audible, Ltd

Genres: Audiobook, Horror, Mystery, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Paranormal, Fantasy

7 pages, Audible Audio

First published September 29, 2018

Reviews

[Shainlock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great voices, somewhat of a good story with too much emphasis on pre-suffrage helpless women at the mercy of misogyny. If there were not so much abuse in the story it would have been great. The cast was incredible.
One of two audible picks of the month. Had I known it wasn’t just a spooky story I would have skipped it altogether. Glad it was free.

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been listening to dramatisations like this in the car as I’m fed up of music and they are more interesting than just audio books as they have a proper cast and sound effects etc. It was well acted and really made you feel like you were in it. The premise was a little predictable but I found myself totally absorbed in the story and there were some bits in there I wasn’t expecting. Overall I enjoyed it.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

My second Audible original selection for April.

Well, this was quite interesting in the beginning. When a young Scottish woman is asked to identify her father's body after being pulled from the water, it sets her on a path heading into a a very dangerous world. The performances were 5 star, but I think the author totally lost me in the last hour with the final direction of his story. Talk about unsatisfying!


Audiobook narrated by a full cast 6h 45mins

[Alaina · Rating 3 out of 5]

When you think you read a book, or even listened to it, and then find out.. that it was all a dream.

Thankfully, The Darkwater Bride was on my audible app and was short enough for me to listen to before I finished my work. I'm also not going to lie, I feel like a lot happened in this book. There is a mysterious family death and then the MC weaves in and out of complicated and weird situations.

The whole plot around the darkwater bride was honestly spooky. She intrigued me to no end because how could you rescue, save, and do all sorts of things.. and then bam - my mind is blown at the end! I think the only thing I would've change would be Catrina. Ugh, she kind of annoyed me in this because she was so young and naïve about so many things. Sometimes she was brave but at that point - it didn't mean much to me.

Overall, super happy that I dove into this. Definitely needed to switch things up genre wise and now I'm ready my next book dive!

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disturbing and sometimes disgusting- this one was hard to listen to. The full cast with all the background production was pretty impressive though.

[Matthew Galloway · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe there is a fine line between refusing to be sidelined and being foolhardy? Regardless, Katrina walks miles beyond that line. She ridiculously kept putting herself into dangerous and upsetting situations needlessly. Cully went too far the other direction, somehow being a good policeman without having any intuition at all. And then everyone spoke incredibly melodramatically and unrealistically all the time. For example, people often muttered foreboding and mysterious things and no one asked them what they meant. Though those same people might berate absolute strangers for information... The last part is that there is a heavy, completely unsubtle theme about men's terrible sexual treatment of women... But it's described often enough and in such a way that I got the feeling that it was more supposed to be naughtily titillating than horrifying. Except when it was supposed to be horrifyingly titillating. And before anyone thinks I'm just being a prude, projects over that last several year have had me read -- and sometimes enjoy -- some pretty steamy romances. :P

[Lennie Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Why won't Goodreads do half stars?!

Some parts were really good. The narrator was excellent. & The general idea of the story was really fun and creepy.

But I found the main character to be very annoying. No one can possibly be this dumb! I think she was supposed to be sheltered? But at some point sheltered just isn't a good enough excuse anymore
🤷 Come on! A gentleman wants un-gentlemanly company? What the hell do you THINK they mean by that! He wants to have sex damn it!

I mean just... Ugh!

Think about it! No wonder the police guy doesn't want to take you anywhere, you're too dumb to be helpful.

All she does most the book is bumble along and ask "where are we going?"

Not exactly fun. I wanted to scream at her most the book. Which, I mean, come on, we all wanna yell at horror story characters at some point. But it was just to much after a bit.

Anyway! Good story was dragged down by an annoyingly dim main character.

Still, it was well preformed an mostly fun. Worth a listen if you enjoy audiobooks. I picked this one up for free as part of my Audible package, so i guess I won't be too picky about a free book. 😉

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Audible drama was an okay bit of Victorian suspense with a dash of the supernatural and a ton of violent misogyny.

Katrina, our spunky female protagonist, is a nice Scottish girl come to London to investigate the death of her banker father. She finds out dear old daddy was actually a terrible, dirty old man. This is not your typical Victorian "cozy," as the author digs up all the infamous perversions and abuses of Victorian society for a grimdark tale of child prostitution, rape clubs, and a vengeful "ghost" who kills abusive men like the main character's father.

It wasn't the violence and rape that annoyed me about this book, nor even the fact that apparently no decent men existed, at all, in Victorian London. Well, there is one decent guy in the story, but of course he ends up dying. It was Katrina, who exhibits a bit too much of that all too common flaw in modern writing, the "spirited" female who acts more like a modern woman plunked down in the 19th century with a corset and a bad attitude. She insists on following the chief investigator everywhere, repeatedly ignoring his pleas to stay behind, which are sometimes just old-fashioned chivalry/sexism, but are sometimes very sensible because seriously, lady, he's trying to have a man-to-man chat with a suspect about whoring, the dude is not going to talk about this shit with you standing there! I mean, sure, a Victorian female protagonist needn't be a Dickensian shivering flower, but I think a sheltered upper class girl from a podunk town in Scotland is going to take a little more adjustment before she's barging her way into "gentlemen's clubs" and threatening to shiv people, ya know?

Other than that, I thought the paranormal aspect was, well, a little thin. It was dropped into the story without a lot of explanation, and it did make the Darkwater Bride interesting and a little scary, but it also seemed more like a convenient plot-driven set of supernatural abilities than a believable Victorian ghost tale.

3 stars from me, because it was entertaining enough but not very memorable. This could be the beginning of a paranormal series... which would not interest me. The voice acting was pretty good, though the fact that this was written as an audible drama and not a novel meant there was an awful lot of characters narrating action as it happened, by necessity.

[Sebastien Castell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an Audible audio drama written by Marty Ross whose version of Treasure Island I listened to recently and enjoyed as well for its ability to blend both classic adventure and contemporary sensibilities. The same is true for The Darkwater Bride, a ghostly suspense thriller set in late Victorian London that begins with the usual tropes of that literary realm but presses forward in its own direction and with its own set of values that, I think, will resonate well with modern listeners.

Let's get the basics out of the way: the story is interesting, with an assortment of plot twists and excellent performances by everyone involved. All of that is fairly standard at this point; writers have learned how to tell Victorian adventure and ghost stories with efficiency and drawing from the usual tropes and cast of characters.

What sets The Darkwater Bride apart for me is its . . . well, I'm unqualified to designate it a "feminist take" on a Victorian ghost story, but certainly the story very intentionally steers its characters away from their typical portrayal. The usual way to do this is to simply give female characters traditionally male gender roles: make the woman the detective, make her a cane-fighting, wise-cracking bad-ass. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but what's considerably harder – and what Ross does with this story – is to simultaneously maintain the usual gender roles ("young lady caught up in the death of her father", "honourable young cop who wants to protect the young lady", and, of course, the mandatory assortment of bankers, prostitutes, and dock workers) while showing us a different take on those characters, and allow each of them to have agency in the story.

I tend to sound like a bit of an idiot when I start treading on an avenue of scholarship for which I've no expertise whatsoever, so I won't venture into the feminist (or otherwise) interpretations and representations imbued in the story. Instead I'll just say that it's always nice when a writer takes you on a different journey – especially inside a well-worn sub-genre like Victorian thriller – than the versions you've read or heard dozens of times before.

I didn't love everything about The Darkwater Bride, but then, I don't think I was meant to. Sometimes an original take on a story is uncomfortable by necessity, and it's a testament to the quality of the work that this audio drama by Marty Ross balances both classic and contemporary sensibilities so well.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Men are Trash: Victorian Edition."

The story of Katrina, a young Scottish woman who travels to Victorian London to investigate the mysterious death of her father is competently performed but is also thoroughly depressing. The "Darkwater Bride" is a local legend that serves as a protective spirit of sorts for the women of the area (mostly prostitutes). Katrina, with the help of a local detective, works to (very slowly) uncover the truth behind her father's death. As a long-form drama, it lacked traditional exposition like you'd find in a novel. That was both good and bad as the performers could actually perform but also problematic as listening to them "emote" is distracting.

The brief story drags substantially in the middle as Katrina visits place after place where "proper ladies" should not go (hint: they're all brothels) but then becomes so utterly depressing as every single male character ends up being revealed as a rapist/abuser of some sort--seriously---every one. It was overwrought and I felt dirty upon finishing this.

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a reasonable production of a very dark Victorian tale, whilst trying to give a "modern" twist...

[OG · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh this was glorious, it did not shy away from the filth and the dirt. To hear language used in such a way to repulse even myself (not easily offended). The grimy gruesome descriptions, the horror of humanity and of the crimes men commit. Pure horrifying poetry.

Got to be honest I was expecting the standard fair, a haunted house, a girl going mad... Don’t expect that.

And before I enter the spoiler zone I’m just going to say that this is not for the faint hearted. This is not a nice tale and it delves into the deepest darkest reaches of humanity. The hidden deprivation of Victorian society. It involves sex, death, violence, sexual violence and a goodly number of bodily fluids. All graphically illustrated.


*spoilers*

Oh wow, the language, a poetic pocket of filth. As beautiful as it is repulsive.

That pretty much sums up this gem.

Catrina is Called down from Scotland to London to identify the body of her father who has been pulled out of a branch of the Thames known as dark water reach.

Distressed as she is, she was very close to her father, cat realises something is amiss with how he died and stays on to try and find out why her father died.

Aided by a green young copper she enters the very depths of London society, meeting rapists, cut throats, prostitutes, a married lesbian couple, and some very unpleasant police officers.

I had no idea this is where this story would take me. It was a heavy journey to take with Cat as we learn who her father truely was and what terrible things he’s done.

The actual title of the book is sort of on a backburner for a lot of the early part of the story. Cats father is horrible enough, but she’s always there, half a step away.

I loved all of this stuff, going to the clubs, the gentleman’s entertainment clubs, the brothels. It was an epic and truthful journey into both dark and light. Not everyone is just in it for themselves.

There is a lot of violence in this. Rape, sexual abuse, paedophilia, the desperation of women.

Yet cat is a strong protagonist who can take care of herself, who will not be manipulated or crossed. I loved her.

The bride... well I’ll not spoil that for you.

I cannot fault this book. It’s amazing.

[Rissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Darkwater bride 3.5⭐️
This was a full production of a murder from the darkwater bride.
We hear his daughter trying to find out the truth behind her fathers death and in the midst of this finds a friend in the police department that helps get her out of sticky situations she continues to put herself in.
When she first comes across the darkwater bride she is rescued, saved, sparred. She doesn’t know who the mysterious woman is she didnt know that that woman was her fathers killer all along.
Catrina is very naive and yet very brave but her bravery is also stupidity. She goes places and does things that after the death of her father I dont think that she would really be doing. Plus after finding out her father was slutting around and tormenting women I dont think she would really want to turn into a slut herself. But luckily Cully is a gentleman and I love him. He wants to protect her from all the vial things in the world but she is too invested to give up.
It was both good and weird and descriptive.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Victorian lady travels to London to investigate the murder of her respectable father and discovers not only the repulsive, seedy part of London, but the secret of the Darkwater bride as well.

3.5 stars for the story. 5 stars for the narration, which is one or the best audible productions I've ever listened to.

Very satisfied with both of my April audible originals.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very fun audio book! It was almost like a play with the accents and different characters, not what I am used to but so refreshing. I enjoyed the story so much as well.

[Bee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good premise but came across as clumsy and pandering

[MangoLoverReads · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 — This audiobook had its moments. It was one of the Audible free monthly selections. The performers did a good job. But the story was too sexually violent. I think a story can be plenty creepy without having to go there. It seems...lazy. It dragged in places and I wasn’t crazy about the ending. The ending wasn’t terrible and it didn’t completely choke (I Really hate when that happens) but it was just sort of meh.

[NanClair Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect raining day thriller, I didn't want it to end.

[Gwynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superior production quality, very good casting. A great, creepy listen.

[Terry ~ Huntress of Erudition · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Audible original production, which was entertaining, yet a gruesome, sordid tale set in Victorian London.
You'll need a strong stomach for this one.

[Lindy Ryan]

When a Scottish businessman’s corpse is dredged from the bogs of the Thames, so begins the unfurling of the seedy underbelly of Victorian London, replete with all the depictions—both trope and true—of murder, corruption, and sexual fetishes that marked the period.

James Miller is dead, his body dumped in the river in an area of London which plays host to no respectable gentlemen and is the stomping ground of prostitutes, thieves, and other no-good types, all strung along the fishy quayside that is bordered in dark, dank water. When Miller’s untimely death is labeled a suicide, his daughter, Catriona, refuses to believe her father would have taken his own life and sets out instead to discover the truth about the true cause of his demise, as well as what he might have been doing in the London slums. Her investigation treks along two diverging and equally unsavory paths: one in which she discovers her father to be perhaps the most revolting of all the no-goods who she crosses on her journey further and further down the staircase of filth and despair of London’s darkest rabbit holes, and the other, which leads her to an even stranger and most ghostly end. Indeed, the story moves from murder mystery to ghost story when Catriona comes face to face with the Darkwater Bride herself, a woman who committed her soul to the murky water if she could live to exact vengeance on the men who’d put her there—men like Catriona’s father.

The narrative itself is somewhat stale and rambling, with a heroine that is often difficult to root for. Catriona spends a significant portion of her narrative trying to convince everyone—perhaps even herself—of her feminism, while her romantic interest (it’s almost unthinkable to imagine romantic interest in a story that bounces between child mutilation, sexual abuse, rape, and bizarre fetishes, but it’s there—as well it should be, as only when confronted with the worst evils of humanity might we crave the comfort of another), rookie detective Culley, mostly bumbles about, torn between his sense of duty to his commanding officer and the siren lure of the young woman he is driven to help. Unfortunately, even poor Culley’s good intentions don’t do him much good in the end. In fact, none of the characters are terribly likeable with the exception of the Darkwater Bride herself, which is a powerful device on its own: We turn our favor away from the innocent, stick our noses up at the obvious antagonists, and, in the end, pledge our loyalty to a woman with a fatal kiss and a drowning vengeance, because of all the darkness in this book, hers is perhaps the most recognizable—the most relatable to our own.

If you can overlook Catriona’s constant whinging and Culley’s cringe-worthy naivety, as well as moments of deep and utter grossness, there is a strangely astute depiction of the contrary nature of sexual empowerment and entrapment lurking between the lines of The Darkwater Bride. From brothel prostitutes and madams to the women who perform in the clubs, to even Catriona and the Darkwater Bride herself, theirs is the story more compelling than that of a hedonistic, repulsive man who meets his worthy end. Instead of a ghostly murder mystery, The Darkwater Bride might be better suited as a tiptoed traipse down the thin line women walk between being predator and prey when they are left with nothing other than their bodies to defend themselves. It’s not a story of death and decay, but one of survival.

At times distasteful and never for the faint at heart, The Darkwater Bride is a bit wobbly, though punctuated by passages of delicate prose so exceedingly beautiful and haunting that it makes a sharp juxtaposition against the rougher parts of the story. What truly elevates the tale, however, is the quality of the production. Dark, gritty, and atmospheric, this Audible production is filled with deviances the likes of which this reviewer hasn’t seen since Karen Moline’s Belladonna (1998). Regardless, the production is simultaneously so disturbing and oddly intriguing that at the end you’ll definitely need a shower, but you’ll listen eagerly for the full six hours before finding the will to pull yourself (somewhat guilty) away from the speaker. It’s horrifying and yet bizarrely invigorating—a story that is as powerful as it is visceral, so that in the end, the reader—like Catriona—might stand defiantly against the darkness and wait in the night like a single white flame against the dark, the very essence of The Darkwater Bride.

[Bob · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was free, so I guess I won’t complain that I didn’t get my money’s worth. I should have walked away after the first several paragraphs, but I couldn’t decide whether I was more disappointed by the production/acting or the story itself. In the final analysis, it was both.

I’m just pathologically prone to finish whatever book I start. I’m sure I must have read worse books, but not many... and none that I can recall. There’s a part of me that keeps hoping and thinking “please, surprise me with the way you get better along the way. Make me glad I stayed around to the end. Show me what you’ve got!”

My final takeaway is that this book resembles something like... imagine a camping event for middle school boys without adult supervision. They decide to have a contest telling ghost stories. This one was the loser.

[Bonnie Thrasher · Rating 1 out of 5]

Free Audible original. The audio was horrific. One second you have to turn it up, the next second, it blares out at full blast. Absolutely the worst sound mixing I have ever heard. The story itself was mildly entertaining. Yet if I had paid for this, I would have returned it straight away. A girl’s father dies. She goes to London to identify the body. She quickly gets immersed in the seedy underbelly where women sell themselves and men drown in Darkwater. The only question is why.

[Ky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well produced, like I was listening to a play. Except at times I felt like I should be watching and was missing stuff with just listening.
The story itself left a little to be desired. It was sort of a mystery, but they showed you who done it pretty early on, which was odd. I enjoyed the ghost-y aspect.

[Mack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this melodrama some, but the players chewed all the scenery completely up, so you couldn't tell where they were. Also, it was hard to sort out which of the characters was screaming and moaning, too. Still, it was pretty good.

[Korynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The acting and the sound design was phenomenal. But the ending left me wanting more. It felt almost anticlimactic, and left a few plot holes still open and unanswered.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Performance=4 ****
The story=2, ridiculous, but an entertaining listen thanks to the talented cast. Kept me absorbed all week.

[debbicat *made of stardust* · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started it. A freebie on audible. Enjoyed the beginning. Not as much later. It’s pretty good on narration. Multiple cast and readers. I just lost interest too soon.

[Devon McCauley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this audio book and the acting was incredible. But wow. This was pretty violent at times; not exactly my cup of tea. The ending was also kind of a let down.

[Gillian · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF
Pretty terrible...