Sara-Jayne Townsend is a published crime and horror writer and likes books in which someone dies horribly. She is founder and Chair Person of the T Party Writers’ Group. http://sarajaynetownsend.weebly.com/
New York, 1954: A young woman left alone after the death of her mother discovers a family and inheritance, she never knew she had, far away in Yorkshire. With no money and nothing to keep her in the US, Sam Cooper boards a ship to travel to England, to meet the grandmother she’s never known.
And so, she finds herself arriving at Begars Abbey, a crumbling forbidding structure built on the foundations of an old convent, and occupied only by Sam’s ailing grandmother and a handful of servants. Hoping to search for answers about her mother’s past, Sam’s investigations only throw up more questions, whilst also unearthing some very dark family secrets.
Brooding and atmospheric, this book is part gothic thriller and part supernatural mystery, depending on your perspective. Sam is not always the most likeable of heroines, but the alienation she feels being all alone and in a strange place very far from home is well illustrated by the author, and you can’t help but feel Sam’s fear as she creeps about the immense and dilapidated structure that was her mother’s childhood home, feeling out of place and out of her depth.
BEGARS ABBEY is an engrossing and genuinely creepy read, especially on long and dark winter nights. Anyone who enjoys gothic thrillers, ghost stories or country house mysteries will find much to enjoy here.
