Status Updates From The Secrets of Blackthorn H...

Not that these creeps don’t deserve to die, but this vengeful climax feels like a mashup of Raiders of the Lost Ark + The Last Crusade. 🤔

Peter’s insanity & cruelty might have more impact if he hadn’t toggled into Villain Mode like a light switch being flipped. No subtlety whatsoever—it happened literally between one page & the next, & now he’s a psycho cartoon that you know won’t survive the finale because he’s so utterly OTT.

I love how Evelyn thinks her husband won’t find out that she & her maid have dosed their driver/bodyguard with laudanum & are snooping around the rickety little village that grovels in terror of her husband’s family. I mean…duuuuur. 🤓

Another housekeeper: Ms. Winters. 🧐 I’m not sure why the author persisted with the Ms. Whoevers, but her editor should’ve overruled…it reads too modern, even for the late 19th-c. (Also: I’m starting to suspect this book is more vibes than content.)

The setting is fabulous, like Hammer horror meets Crimson Peak meets Turn of the Screw. I’m not sold on the characters, though; heroine seems like a non-entity & the husband is an absentee villain thus far. 🤔 Proceeding to Chapter 3……

Hm. Seems a little “tell not show,” but I just finished a 1st-person novel, so that might be my brain having trouble shifting back to 3rd-person. (But I’m pretty sure housekeepers were dubbed with an honorary Mrs regardless of their marriage status, esp if they were old enough to be turning gray. 🧐 In any case, a housekeeper named Ms Farrow feels overly modern.)

Never tried anything from this publisher before, so we’ll see how it goes.