My Review…

The Silent Companions is a gothic, foreboding, spooky ghost story.  It is very well written and I especially enjoyed the setting of the crumbling mansion (named The Bridge) in England. The story alternates between events of 1635 to the present day of 1865.

It begins with Elsie in an asylum, with a creepy attendant and a young doctor who exclaims, “I am here to decide your fate.”  He wasn’t joking.

The history of the house is told and it is a strange one.  It was left empty during and after the Civil War, until family started to return, but no one stayed for very long. Were skeletons buried under the house?

When Elsie moves back into the house, she begins to “experience” it. She describes her bed as “cold and sinister”, she finds mysterious items, hears hissing in the night, walks on a wobbling staircase and the house seems to be “watching her” along with the lurking servants.

Just who is going mad here?

A spookalicious read with a ending that made me gasp!

Thanks to Edelweiss for my ARC. Rating 4/5 stars.

Book Description…

Inspired by the work of Shirley Jackson and Susan Hill and set in a crumbling country mansion, The Silent Companions is an unsettling gothic ghost story to send a shiver down the spine…

Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband’s crumbling country estate, The Bridge.

With her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband’s awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. But inside her new home lies a locked room, and beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary and a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure – a Silent Companion – that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself..