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What a gothically infused gem of a novel. A dark, mysterious manor house in Cornwall, some of the creepiest characters you will ever meet, and a distinct flavour of Du Maurier throughout. This is a novel where the tiniest of details means something very significant. Keys, shadows, noises next door….and a veil of truth and lies covering anything that might explain away the fog. This book took me two months to read despite my excitement after reading the blurb. The writing felt very lazy and inconsistent, even though it is just one character. Another issue with he writing is the exact way chapters set in 1888 and the ones set thirty years later sound. Do people think in the exact same words at 20 and at 50? I don’t think so. To my utter astonishment, (and maybe to shut me up!!) Beth kindly sent me a beautiful dedicated proof, so I instantly cast aside my TBR plan for the month, and dived straight in. Dark an atmospheric as it may be, I found it interesting but a little too slow for my taste. It was quite obvious from the beginning that all characters had something to hide and although Ivy very bravely set out to find the truth, she's hindered by her own experiences and expectations.
Play Review: The Witchfinder’s Sister - The London Horror Play Review: The Witchfinder’s Sister - The London Horror
Ivy Boscawen is grieving heavily for her son, she’s immersed within her emotions. He was killed in the war.Essex, 1645. Alice Hopkins ( Lily Knight) finds herself widowed, pregnant, and forced to return to her childhood home in Manningtree to throw herself on the goodwill of her brother Matthew ( George Kemp). But Manningtree is rife with rumours of witchcraft, and Matthew is poised to launch upon his infamous reign of terror. Alice races to reveal what’s compelling the obsessively cruel Witchfinder General, before more innocent women are found guilty.
The Witch Finder’s Sister by Beth Underdown review
Set almost 400 years in the past, the core themes of this story could apply to any aspect of female life in the 21st century. Even following a period of 28 weeks in which 81 women were killed, with male suspects in every case, women still aren’t being listened to (extra police presence will not make us feel safer) and will routinely get shut down in debates with men for being hysterical or too emotional, even for calmly stating reasonable arguments. Alice is continually treated in this manner by both Matthew and Mary, especially as she digs deeper into what’s been happening in her absence. I can count on one hand authors whose books are an auto-buy for me. Beth has been one of those authors since reading her debut in 2017. She sits comfortably alongside Sarah Waters where I don’t even have to read the synopsis, I already know I’m going to love it, it’s a given.With a husband afflicted with serious health issues, Ivy feels the only way she will find peace and face the future is if she gets to the truth of what happened long ago when as Ivy Cardew, the daughter of a struggling doctor, she was helping him with nursing duties. This mystery of what happened at the country manor house of the Tremains is slowly revealed and the terrible repercussions that followed in the wake of the fire, including the inquest. The family that includes Edward Tremain, the heir to Polneath, the father of William, is a man Ivy fell in love with. In a narrative loaded with twists and turns aplenty, with its wide range of characters, little is as it appears, we learn that in this small community, everyone had secrets, both upstairs, with the Tremain family, and downstairs, with the servants. I have to be blunt here: highly recommend if you're into pining for your teenage crush for 30 years, couples not communicating with each other, random trips to the other side of the country without telling anyone, more pining, mysterious deaths that are not so mysterious if you think about it, some more pining. The standout role was that of Matthew’s servant girl, Grace (a wonderful Miracle Chance), who stood out precisely because she had personality; she felt real. Everyone else was doing their job as a dramatic device a bit too plainly. Matthew is cold from the outset; he and Alice never find pleasure in each other’s company. When they meet again after a five year separation, he stops her hug with a handshake and it’s all downhill from there. We never see any richness or complexity in the sibling relationship that would make the unravelling of it a compelling, heart-rending watch. This is nothing to do with any of the actors or even the writing: only that the characters selected to appear in the play are necessarily the ones best positioned to keep the story moving, but with a running time of under two hours, there is little opportunity for nuance or development.
The Key In The Lock by Beth Underdown | Goodreads The Key In The Lock by Beth Underdown | Goodreads
The conflicts were just not it. The entire time i was rolling my eyes at how whiny everyone was with everything. Like chill, y’all. It’s not even that bad. However, at night Ivy mourns another soul that was lost far before his time which sadly was still in the innocence of childhood yet this death was a decade ago but still feels as if it took place only yesterday as those memories of the fire, her father being sent to help someone who had the task of keeping her charge, the poor boy in questions well-being and a certain individual who is far from innocent, all start to play more and more on her thoughts when the death of the boy will not rest.My verdict? A chilling show that links the 17th and 21st centuries in a truly terrifying way – atmospheric sound design takes the production to a whole new level.
The Witchfinder’s Sister – Mind the blog The Witchfinder’s Sister – Mind the blog
I very much enjoyed the scares in The Witchfinder’s Sister. There are a couple of good jump scares awaiting you (though in my opinion there should have been more), but also some truly harrowing emotionally intense scenes that left me feeling very uncomfortable. In this regard, one of the best scenes is saved for the very end and makes for a ‘was it / wasn’t it’ witchcraft scenario. I must commend Lily Knight for her powerful performance here. I loved The Witch-finders Sister, but this one didn't have that magic for me. Its very well written, I think maybe its the characters I just didn't connect with in the same way. For me I need to like – or at last feel something – for the main characters and here somehow I just couldn't feel empathy, sympathy, and kind of deep emotion for them. They acted in ways I found hard to accept even as I understood why. And of course there's that time period, it is hard now to understand just how much more flawed the law was then, how women and the poor could lose everything through actions they had little control over. Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh on some of them. By day, Ivy Boscawen mourns the loss of her son Tim in the Great War. But by night she mourns another boy - one whose death decades ago haunts her still.
For Ivy is sure there is more to what happened all those years ago: the fire at the great house, and the terrible events that came after. A truth she must uncover, if she is ever to be free. This is a very well written novel in a style in keeping with the times and gives excellent historical context, depicting the world of 1888 and the changing world of 1918/19. It is abundantly rich in atmosphere especially in Polneath, Cornwall, allowing you to picture the big house, the gun powder mills, the unlikeable character of Old Tremain and the enigma of Edward Tremain, his son and William’s father. Polneath lies at the heart of everything we learn about Ivy and the death of William. The 1888 storyline is spooky, chilling, secretive and deeply mysterious and links well to 1918 when characters are unmasked. Half of the mysteries were not engaging. The only thing that caught me by surprise was whose *the* child turns out to be. But it lasted one second and then I only thought, okay, I guess?
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