Hearts Strange and Dreadful

I've so much to say here, I hope I can get it all out.

First and foremost, this book...this damned book. It's incredible. After finishing McGregor's WASPS IN THE ICE CREAM I'd been looking for more from him. At the time, the bookstore was out of everything except this one, which I bought without even bothering to read the back.

I'm typically not too enamoured of historical settings, but in the last couple of months, I've been entranced by Brom's SLEWFOOT and even moreso by Alex Grecian's RED RABBIT but I have to say, of the three, this one absolutely grabbed me.

McGregor's strengths are all on display here:
His characters live and breath and settle into your heart as real people. I ached for Hester. And Will, for all of that. But every show more single character is finely crafted and carefully drawn. Which ties into one of McGregor's other strengths...don't come into one of his novels expecting slam bang action in the first three-quarters of the book. McGregor is an absolute master of slowly building both the story and the tension, building not with big bricks, but specifically chosen small stones, carefully fitted into place. You may think, as the reader, that he's overloading you with extraneous detail, but he's not. All that detail pays off. ALL of it. So, all those things you learn about the people, the town, their attitudes and their behaviours...your patience is rewarded.

And finally, there's the sheer storytelling ability of the author. Very much like WASPS you'll feel very little horror in the first half, and only some in the third quarter. But that last bit?

Damn.

Without spoiling anything, I will say that McGregor crafted—and I choose that word carefully, because this guy does magic with words that goes beyond writing—scenes that left me teared up, heartbroken. I went through one entire sequence, and it actually, honestly, hurt to swallow because I had a lump in my throat through the entire scene. Other scenes left my heart thudding in my chest. Several times, I know I whispered expletives, or things like, "oh no..."

There's books that are a great read. And I love those. I can examine the language, the style. They're a great experience.

But then there's books that go far beyond that. They become the reader's reality for a time. You slip out of your own life, and you fall into the world inside that book. That's a far more rare experience for me, but it happened here. I found myself two hundred years in the past, and I lived this book.

Why Tim McGregor doesn't have a major book deal and is lauded as one of the premiere authors of our time—not just a horror author, but an Author—is a mystery to me.

This is a brilliant book. show less

"Wickstead, Rhode Island, 1821. Hester Stokely is an orphan who struggles to find her place in the home of her Aunt Katherine, Uncle Pardon, and their brood of children. But when family and neighbors begin rapidly dying off, Hester realizes that something more dangerous than disease has come to town. She must confront this unknown evil or be the only one left...again."

If you read my review for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, you know I love a classic, historical horror. There are persistent mentions of the very real Year Without a Summer (1816) and The Year of Starvation (1817). What's more, this one is inspired by a true story - the exhumation of Mercy Brown. You bet I clocked that immediately. During a galloping consumption show more (tuberculosis) epidemic, Mercy's family had performed a desperate, ghoulish act in pursuit of a cure, and the traditional, God-fearing citizens of Wickstead are no different. Hester herself exhibits a tenacious and practical personality, but she yearns to be accepted and loved. Her family are not abusive, yet they rely on Hester while still keeping her at arm's length. However, nothing can prepare them for the scratching at the windows at night and the baleful pleas of the dead to be "let in."

Only a couple of things kept this from being a 5 ⭐. On one hand, it's a mix of creeping, slow burn horror and the downright macabre. Hester's final encounter with her "Aunt Katherine" is especially chilling. On the other hand, the elegant "Lady Fiske", who mysteriously arrives amidst the devastation, was such a captivating character yet the reader barely scratches the surface of her backstory. After Katherine's (re)appearance, I was looking forward to a dramatic confrontation with Fiske but her fire burns too hot and too fast so to speak. Other than that, minor quibbles include some anachronisms in the dialogue - like the word "kimono" - and slightly repetitious character introductions and descriptions. Overall though, this was a stand-out re-working of one of the strangest episodes in American history! show less

Well, I still don't know exactly how I feel about this novel. I absolutely loved McGregor's Spookshow series so I was super pumped to hear that he had written a new novel. I feel like this one developed really slowly but I know that McGregor is setting the stage for what I am sure will be another amazing series. It took me about halfway through before I got hooked. I had figured out what was going on in the novel a bit early and I guessed who the culprit was but it didn't take away from the suspense of the novel. I feel that the story ended too quickly but I know that the next novel will pick right up where this one ended and honestly I can't wait until the second book to see what happens next!