Hi guys!
I am SO excited to talk about this book. I originally heard about it thanks to Darkroom Tours on instagram and just had to get a copy for myself!
If I’m being honest the cover was defiantly the thing that pulled me in first, but then I saw it was set in the Scottish Highlands and is about disappearances and has a spooky seriously spooky vibe!! It just sounded amazing!!!
They are driving home from the search party when they see her. The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men.
Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she’s gone.
In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren’s mother a decade ago.
Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father’s turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing it’s no longer clear who she can trust.
This book starts of a little bit slow, but I think it just helps to set the tone of the small Highland town. How everyone knows everyone else, nothing ever happens and that it’s nearly completely cut off from the rest of the world. You meet quite a lot of people in the first chapter which was a bit overwhelming at first but again, it just made you feel those small town vibes because you pretty much meet everyone very quickly.
Pretty quickly you begin to feel the claustrophobic nature of the town, mainly through Niall as he seems to be constantly not in the mood to chat with anyone or go anywhere. The way the story is written makes you suspicious of nearly everyone to meet and you start to not trust people the same time as Lauren.
Even though Lauren is a child, and a lot of her mannerisms definitely show how young she is, that doesn’t make it feel at all childish or young. Lauren has a lot of independence, and I would say has had to grow up quite quickly in some ways so although she does not behave how an adult would she does deal with things logically and realistically most of the time.
I have to say, I did not see the ending coming and I had so many theories throughout the book but I was so wrong. And I’m glad! I devoured the last couple of chapters of the book SO fast because I simply had to know what happened next! I also really liked how it ended (no spoilers) and it felt really natural and true to how things probably are dealt with in real life.
I am so glad I picked up this book, and I recommend it to anyone that loves and kind of spooky books!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5
See you next time!
Elizabeth
Dainty Beth Blog 