This is a very real contender for my favourite book of the year. It’s set in Victorian England and is full of atmosphere and mystery. There are so many things that I love about this book but I’ll try to capture just a few.
The story follows Cora Seaborne who has just lost her husband. Turns out he wasn’t that nice a chap and she’s still very young so she’s in a much better position. There are two potential love interests in the book and I found it hard to decide who I was rooting for! But what I loved about this book is how normal the characters are. All of them are flawed in their own way and that makes them human and very believable. Not one of them is set up as the perfect protagonist. Which makes the ending perfect, because if it had ended any other way it wouldn’t have worked or felt authentic.
A range of themes are covered, evolution as a new, developing theory, the role of women in society and social housing/poverty. It could feel like there’s a lot going on but each thread pulls together to weave into the main story which is Cora’s search for the Essex Serpent which plagues the village of Aldwinter. This is the part that is suitably creepy and the mystery and melodrama is fantastic.
It’s the kind of book that you should read on a cold December night with a mug of hot chocolate!
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