1,5⭐️ rounded down

The Thin Place

Another read with the fantastic Jayme, who felt up for something in spooky and so was I!

Thin Places are described as "those rare locales where the distance between heaven and Earth collapses", in Celtic beliefs.

The book was promising, at least in the beginning, until… let me put a trigger warning for you

⚠️death of animals⚠️. (I add child death as well, I guess) be careful with the epilogue!

You may officially call me a cold hearted *itch, I can read anything. But the death of an animal? Get me out.

Overtoun Estate - a real place - has a dark secret and it has been buried for a long time. The mysterious bridge were hundreds of dogs leapt into death. A mysterious White Lady.

Ava is a reporter based in Glasgow. Ava is finally pregnant and does not know much about her own families history, especially her mothers. She only remembers glimpses from her own childhood. Billy chance she stumbles over the mystery of Overtoun Estate and feels connected.

The atmosphere when she visits is weird, she feels something. Of course she takes her mothers dog with her into the job and the poor thing almost leaps into its demise. Luckily not.
Ava becomes obsessed with the place and it’s history.

We get three different storylines. Ava in the present, Constance in 1949, who is a sick child, and Marion in 1929 who is swooned away by a Scottish man who owns the Estate.

How are the three women connected?

I really enjoyed the story in the beginning, especially when I looked up the places, did wonders for the imagination. Gorgeous places. But, after the first dog incident I started to get annoyed with Ava. And it stuck a bit with me. She neglects her own family and health.
I felt the most connected with poor Marion.

Overall, I liked the storyline enough, it would have been better without Ava. I wonder sometimes what’s the sense in a main character that you just can’t stand?

The epilogue was gratuitous, so unnecessary. The book started very strong and then it tumbled down the hill…. Errr…. Bridge. I hated the main character, they killed dogs for nothing, the mystery kept us guessing but it fell flat for me. Urgh.

The thing that kept me going was Jayme, otherwise I would not have made it very far. ❤️

Thankyou NetGalley for the ARC copy in exchange for an honest review. This book gave me goosebumps, I didn’t want to read it at night but I was too invested to put it down, I was thrilled to discover that it was based on a real life historical Scottish mystery!
A news reporter in the present day visits a dilapidated, huge Manor House to investigate a story about an old Victorian bridge called Overtoun Bridge northwest of Glasgow - rumoured to be a ‘thin place’, it is a Celtic belief that the veil between this world and the other is thinnest in these places. This is a real place, and there have indeed been reports of hundreds of Dogs since the 1950’s leaping off the bridge to their death on the rocks below,  some have been recorded to survive the fall only to limp back up and do it again - nobody knows why!? A man in the 1990s threw a baby to his death on the same bridge, before attempting to throw himself over too. There have been bodies discovered around the estate, miles from where they are supposed to be. There is also rumoured to be the ghost of ‘The White Lady’ haunting the estate grounds, which has also been worked into this story. The author informs at the end that you can walk around the estate today, and have a pot of tea in the tearoom - I would love to visit!
Ava arrives at the scene to film and the foreboding house looming over them calls to her, and she is subsequently drawn into unearthing the history of the house and its inhabitants. She soon becomes obsessed with uncovering it’s dark history as she has some creepy experiences and feelings while filming on site! We discover this history alongside her, as we spend time with a character in the 20’s and a character in the 40s. This book has some desperately sad, disturbed characters, there’s a tragic storyline underpinning an ominous atmosphere that really keeps you guessing as the tension builds until you’re reading so fast to just get to the bottom of the mystery!! With family dramas, relationship problems, well fleshed out characters, and some supernatural eeriness thrown in. This was a great read!
Trigger warnings are spoilers so DM me for them.

This book was okay. I saw the twist coming and felt meh about the resolution. The audiobook narrator did an excellent job differentiating between the perspectives.

Read for the February Mini Challenge hosted by The 52 Book Club. Prompt “Mirror Mirror”

I guess I read too many books with the same format, and the connection between characters don’t surprise me anymore. I am not complaining about this multigenerational family timelines, but I was kind of hopeful there would not have been blood relations between the characters this time around. But I understand the book would not have worked. I am just being annoying and picky.

It was predictable (not the family connections but the whole story) but we’ll written. I was shocked about Constance’s story (not the way it evolved but what happened to her) and Marion was such a complex character.

The historical note is extremely interesting and I’ll read more about what was mentioned.

Easy reading as story carried on nicely with good tension and thriller aspects though tackles some unsettling topics.

*I was kindly sent this in exchange for an honest review via Netgalley*

This was a very intriguing story. At first I thought that three different storylines would be too much, or that it could get confusing, but it wasn’t the case. The story was kind of predictable, at least for me, from very early on, but I enjoyed how the author placed the clues and foreshadowing. Also, there were some unexpected events that kept the suspense going. As for the writing, I think that it was pretty good, the story was fluid, and the pace was fast. I also like the concept of thin places, I didn’t know they were a thing outside of this book, but it gave an original spin on a story that otherwise wouldn’t have stood out much.

As for the main characters, I will separate this in the three storylines:

1930s: Hamish was a nightmare of a person and husband and for about half of the novel I felt bad about Marion and the babies, but then I found out she was a horrible person, and her behaviour is not justified.

1950s: The storyline of Constance and the dog was devastating to read, how can a person (the mother) hold so much hatred inside.

Present: Ava made me really angry for most of the book, because of how she neglected the people she loved the most, including her husband and unborn baby. With her family I was a bit on the fence, because I did not trust her mother, and there was something about the sister that irked me a little.

Overall, it was a good book, I recommend reading it if you enjoy mystery thrillers. Also, I didn’t see the ending coming, it was a nice shocking way to finish the book.