Harriet Watkins has gone into service and supported a beloved employer through her last years. Her family expect her to return to the country and marry her long term sweetheart but Harriet has follwed the wishes of her previous employer and gone to work at a country house. There she falls under the spell of Mrs Gethin, a fragile beauty. The house is disquieting and Harriet discovers the horrors that happen there - the master is both powerful and corrupt. She escapes and tries to help her mistress but can there be a happy ending? At a point in this book I began to question whether I would be able to finish, the Gothic elements were laid on so thickly, however I'm glad I persevered. This is a rather good Victorian story about the venal underbelly of society and the powerlessness of women. There is redemption of a sort at the end but it's only partial and leaves the reader wanting to know more. A very good debut.

A heavily Jane Eyre inspired tale of power and abuse in Victorian Britain. The first half is slow, focused as it is on the everyday troubles of a servant in Finton Hall, but the atmosphere is effectively foreboding. From the halfway mark, the pace suddenly picks up. By the end, I was convinced that it did need all the eerie loose threads and jarring observations of the slow parts to have the ending and the mystery work so well. Be warned though: the content becomes quite dark. The characterisations are excellent and the setting was clearly well considered and researched. Thank you to Fourth Estate at HarperCollins for my reading copy.

A slow start to the story andi t took awhile for me to become involved but then it suddenly took off and was exciting and interesting through to the end. Some well described characters and good, descriptive writing.

Harriet is young maid newly employed at the home of MP Ralph Gethin. She anxious to make a good impression having moved from her previous employ at the request of Clara Gethin, the MP's wife. She is destined at some point to return home to marry William but she finds Clara entrancing, especially after she hears her mistress singing. However, all in not well in the fine house. The other servants are unpleasant and downright nasty to Harriet, and her mistress is often distant and odd. As secrets unravel Harriet finds disturbing things go on at the hall and all is not as it seems. I found this book very slow to begin with, and was reluctant to pick it up again to read. However, at the half way point, when the action moves to London so the speed picks up and so did my interest. I very much enjoyed the ending too. The characters are quite complex as they are often not what they appear and even Harriet has more to her than initially meets the eye. The details of life in the big house and the servants life along with the clothing and food and transport are all well told. All in all a good and interesting read and worth persisting with, although trimming a bit from the first section would make it an easier read. With thanks to Netgalley, 4th Estate and William Collins for an arc copy in return for an honest review.

I read an eARC of this book so thank you to the author, the publisher and Net Galley. This book took a while to get going but wow the second half really ramped up fast! We follow a maid who has taken a position in a different home following the death of her mistress. She has a betrothed waiting for her but she seems reluctant to go back and agrees to go and serve one of her mistresses friends. Her new mistress behaves strangely, lashing out at times, mood swings, confiding with her maid at times. Our MC is conflicted about whether to go back and get married or stay in service. However she starts to learn things about the family she works for and reveals some horrifying truths. The first half did feel a big long and repetitive. Our MC goes back and forth a lot on if she should get married. There’s a lot of issues with a senior servant and a lot of barely there interactions with the new mistress. However it’s all worth it for the second half where the books becomes really thrilling! In the second half the book goes in a completely different direction and mysteries and true characters are unravelled. We have gothic themes of entrapment, oppressive houses, cruel men, alleged madness. I enjoyed this. I’m glad I stuck with it as once it got going it was gripping. I would warn there’s some quite dark content in this. I don’t want to say too much in case of spoilers but I would advise checking content warnings. There are violent acts described.