When I was recently approached to review Jean Harrod's latest novel, I was intrigued. I've already read and reviewed the books in her Diplomatic Crime Series, Deadly Diplomacy, Deadly Deceit and Missing In Shanghai (click through to read those reviews) but her latest novel moves into the ghostly thriller genre.
The inspiration for the novel is a legend from the North York Moors. It tells the tale of Kitty Garthwaite, a young servant girl who, having discovered she was pregnant, was abandoned by her lover, Willie Dixon, and ended up dead in the nearby river at Hutton-le-Hole. The next day he was discovered dead in the same stretch of water and over the next twenty years, sixteen more men lost their lives in the same stretch of river. Kitty's ghost was blamed for the deaths, assuming she was taking revenge on the local men for their indiscretions.
In It Began With A Ghost Story, we follow the tale of Grace Winter, a young doctor whose mother has recently died. After her death, Grace inherited a house on the North York Moors that she knew nothing about, so she decides to go and visit to try to unearth this secret part of her mother's life. She takes her two best friends, Samantha and Evie, along with her. Both of the girls seem to have their own problems. Samantha seems to be hitting the drink a bit heavily and Evie is very fragile, having been left by her husband after several years of trying unsuccessfully to start a family.
Grace loves the house and explores its contents, trying to uncover her mother's secrets, but the girls are concerned when they encounter spooky visions. When a young man is found dead in the river, the girls become the focus of the police investigation, especially when Evie is discovered in the area. Do they really have anything to do with the murder or is there a ghostly killer in the area?
It's an enjoyable read with just the right degree of spookiness. You can read it as a sceptic, assuming that all the other-worldliness can be explained away or you can accept, with a tingle down your spine, that Kitty really did continue to haunt the area. Either way, the ending will probably come as a complete shock. I was pleased to see that this book is the first in a new Grace Winter series. I look forward to finding out more about this character in the upcoming novels as I'm sure she has a lot more to give.
star rating : 4.5/5
RRP : £8.99
- Publisher : York Authors Coffee Shop Ltd; First Edition (15 Aug. 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 329 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1739671201
- ISBN-13 : 978-1739671204
Disclosure : I received a review copy of the book in order to share my honest opinion.
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