My Darling Dreadful Thing on May 14, 2024 Genres: gothic, horror
Pages: 375
Goodreads
Spirits are drawn to salt, be it blood or tears.
Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth—strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries—is the light of Roos' life. That is, until the wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop visits one of Roos' backroom seances, and the two strike up a connection.
Soon, Roos is whisked away to the crumbling estate Agnes inherited upon the death of her husband, where an ill woman haunts the halls, strange smells drift through the air, and mysterious stone statues reside in the family chapel. Something dreadful festers in the manor, but still, the attraction between Roos and Agnes is undeniable.
Then, someone is murdered.
Poor, alone, and with a history of 'hysterics', Roos is the obvious culprit. With her sanity and innocence in question, she'll have to prove who—or what—is at fault or lose everything she holds dear.
I wanted to like My Darling Dreadful Thing more than I did. But also, upon reflection, there’s nothing that I can really point to that I didn’t like about the book. It was a quick read, I didn’t really put it down, I enjoyed it, but when I finished it, it just felt kind of…done.
But maybe that’s the point, there really isn’t a point to it. It’s just a snapshot of this weird, strange, disturbing thing that happened in Roos’ life. Then she moved on after the pages stopped turning, and so do we.
Now don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy it. The atmosphere was eerie and gothic (atmospheric reads seem to be my thing this year). Both houses, the one Roos does seances in with her mom and the one she moves to with Agnes, feel like characters in themselves. It’s very haunting.
While Roos felt like a fully formed character, it was interesting to see how she’s portrayed in the interspersed notes from a psychologist. In her own timeline, you believe everything that’s going on. You believe Ruth is real, everything terrible and creepy is real. But in the notes, I started to question whether any of it was real or if it was just in her head. Much like everyone else who can’t see spirits treats her in her own timeline.
By the end of it, I wanted to believe her but I found myself not trusting her narrative 100%. Which I think makes me a skeptic, although I hate admitting that.
Either way, there wasn’t really anything “wrong” with the book. In fact, the writing was great and I will probably pick up more of Johanna van Veen’s writing. I might have her newest book in my cart already.
