Description
A young man arrives in a small town, hoping to leave his past behind him, but everything changes when he takes a job in a peculiar old shop, and meets a lonely single mother… A hypnotic gothic thriller and a mesmerising study of identity and obsession.
When Teddy Colne arrives in the small town of Rye, he believes he will be able to settle down and leave his past behind him.
Little does he know that fear blisters through the streets like a fever. The locals tell him to stay away from an establishment known only as Berry & Vincent, that those who rub too closely to its proprietor risk a bad end. Despite their warnings, Teddy is desperate to understand why Rye has come to fear this one man, and to see what really hides behind the doors of his shop.
Ada moved to Rye with her young son to escape a damaged childhood and years of never fitting in, but she’s lonely, and ostracised by the community. Ada is ripe for affection and friendship, and everyone knows it. As old secrets bleed out into this town, so too will a mystery about a family who vanished fifty years earlier, and a community living on a knife edge.
Teddy looks for answers, thinking he is safe, but some truths are better left undisturbed, and his past will find him here, just as it has always found him before. And before long, it will find Ada too.
Tracey Harriman –
Well how deliciously dark!
Shiver-inducing creepiness from beginning to end.
Evil doesn’t just live within the characters; it has taken up residence within the town. It’s crept it’s way in and taken hold.
Turner’s writing encourages the reader to question whether we can escape the sins of our family, and whether evil is inherited or can be caught like a disease. Spend too long in the company of a psychopath and you may, unwittingly, be led down a path from which there is no escape. You may be the next body that evil takes control of.
This is not a feel good book, it is not a light read. You may not want to be reading this just before bedtime.
I’ve seen a couple of comparisons to Stephen King. Understandable; anyone who writes this genre of stories is going to face that association. There are definite parallels. Turner sets the scene and creates an atmosphere without being quite so ‘wordy’. There is more punch to her writing than King’s. She certainly invokes the same level of intensity and darkness.
Do I want to read more? Hell yes!
Do I want to visit Rye? I think I’ll take a pass on that.