The Whispering House
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2.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
"Eerie and addictive. . . . Like Wuthering Heights, The Whispering House is a melancholy novel, its characters filled with dark longings." — The New York Times Book Review
From the acclaimed author of The Orphan of Salt Winds
It was like holding a couple of jigsaw pieces in my palm, knowing there was a whole picture to be made, if I could only find the rest.
Freya Lyell is struggling to move on from her sister Stella’s death five years ago. Visiting the bewitching Byrne Hall, only a few miles from the scene of the tragedy, she discovers a portrait of Stella—a portrait she had no idea existed, in a house Stella never set foot in. Or so she thought.
Driven to find out more about her sister’s secrets, Freya is drawn into the world of Byrne Hall and its owners: charismatic artist Cory and his sinister, watchful mother. But as Freya lingers in this mysterious, centuries-old house, her relationship with Cory crosses the line into obsession and the darkness behind the locked doors of the estate threatens to spill out.
In prose as lush and atmospheric as Byrne Hall itself, Elizabeth Brooks weaves a simmering, propulsive tale of art, sisterhood, and all-consuming love: the ways it can lead us toward tenderness, nostalgia, and longing, as well as shocking acts of violence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brooks (The Orphan of Salt Winds) cooks up a spellbinding gothic story featuring a sinister country house. Aspiring poet Freya Lyell, 23, mourns the apparent death by suicide of her mercurial older sister, Stella, at 21, who jumped from a cliff not far from stately Byrne Hall in England's West Country. Five years on, Freya and her father attend a cousin's wedding on the grounds of the imposing house. After a few drinks and the glimpse of a mysterious man emerging from the cliff path, Freya wanders into the house's front hall to discover a portrait of a girl who appears to be Stella. When she returns to inquire about the picture, she is lured into a web of dark intrigue spun by the house's inhabitants: artist Cory Byrne, who remembers having Stella pose for him a week before her death, and Cory's enigmatic mother, Diana. While there is never any doubt who the bad guys and good guys are, the yarn moves swiftly and with sufficient suspense to its predictable denouement, Brooks's lean prose never getting in the way of the plot. This is an exquisitely creepy page-turner. Agent, Sarah Levitt, Aevitas Creative.
