NEW RELEASE
The Dark Water - Helen Moorhouse (2012)
Martha Armstrong has moved to Scotland to start a new life with partner Will. His obsession with his work with the paranormal has led to some problems in their relationship, and when Martha's ex-husband arrives back on the scene looking for access to their daughter, Martha begins to have some doubts. Will seeing Dan again rekindle old feelings and threaten her fresh start? Meanwhile, their friend Gabriel enlists Martha and Will's help with mysterious occurrences in Dubhglas Castle, owned by his godfather, and the place where his brother died. When they travel to the castle, they discover some menacing spirits of the past still linger there. This was a very gripping sequel to The Dead Summer, and I was engrossed from the first page. While there is an adequate amount of romance and relationship issues to class this book as chick lit, the real story for me lay in the paranormal activity at Dubhglas Castle. Excellently written passages made it all feel frighteningly real and I genuinely had chills at times while reading. A very well thought-out plot full of suspense, I was very impressed with this novel and would highly recommend it. (LO)
The Dead Summer - Helen Moorhouse (2011)
When Martha Armstrong's divorce comes through after the discovery of her husband's secret second life, she and her baby girl leave London to start again in a countryside cottage. Initially entranced by Hawthorn Cottage, Martha sees it as the ideal environment for her to finally pen the book she's always craved to write - but then the noises start. The footsteps, even though she knows there's nobody else in the house but her and her baby. The scratching, which she puts down to trapped animals even though intuition tells her that it's something else. The crying in the night, which she assumes must also be animal noises. Martha initially convinces herself that any perceived threat is all in her imagination, desperate to achieve the country idyll she's always dreamed of - but she can't shake the feeling that a malevolent presence surrounds her and her daughter in the cottage. What Martha doesn't know is that Hawthorn Cottage was the scene of brutality in years gone by when two Irish girls lived in it and a baby was born there, and their fate now casts a dark shadow over Martha and her little girl. As the villagers begin to provide hints to Martha that the cottage has a tragic past, she's forced to uncover its secrets ... but can she possibly protect herself and her daughter from the power of the evil in the cottage or is it already too late? As soon as you've finished reading this book, you realise just how perfectly the title encapsulates the book's contents. It is a chilling and sometimes heartbreaking read, and an ominous sense of menace pervades the book from the third chapter onwards and doesn't let up until very close to the end (there are 36 chapters in the book, and the 34th is about as heartstopping as anything I've read in any women's fiction book). Fans of Linda Kavanagh will love this new author. (SBB)
