WOW - brilliant, loved every word of this ravishing historical thriller.

I do wish I hadn't read this book!! Only because I'm pretty darned certain it's going to such a hard act to follow that I'm going to find each and every new book I pick up for months, lacking in comparison and I'm saddened and green with envy that everyone who is yet to read this, still has it's delights to look forward to.

The description had me chomping at the bit, the cover had me swooning and I KNEW without doubt that it was my kind of book to a T. Yet still I didn't know what absolute reading PERFECTION this completely spectacular book was going to be.

Reminding me very much of two of my all time favourite reads Affinity and The Observations I am almost lost for words, to describe my feelings adequately after reading this.

It is a historical twisty mystery which is deviously dark and devilishly delectable. Featuring two very different young women. Dorothea Truelove is a well off young lady who wishes to do good works, has an interest in reading the shape of the head, phrenology and in particular observing the characteristics displayed by criminals. She resists her fathers attempts to marry her off, wishing to choose her own suitor, though this is not an option of the well to do Victorian female.

Her choice of good works is to be a prison visitor in Oakgate womens prison, where she soon becomes intrigued and involved with the young murderess Ruth Butterham who is charged with murdering her employer. A talented seamstress, with self taught skills she hones creating herself a corset from scraps of left over fabric, Ruth falls on very hard times as a series of dreadful personal disasters leads her to believe she can cause death by sewing hatred and ill will into the garments she works on.

With her talent with a needle being the only way she can earn a living she ends up apprenticed to the vile and Dickensian sweat shop of the Metyard familys dressmaking business.

What follows is a life of drudgery which is revealed stitch by intricate stitch, as she slaves for the Metyards, crosses paths with the vile Captain, makes a friend in Mim and encounters the handsome Billy. The lives of these two women entwine as each struggles against the whims of others and the restrictions placed on women in this era.

Their are dastardly deeds aplenty, the writing is sheer poetry it has an eerie and compelling literary quality and the characters are sublime. It is worthy of comparison with the wonderful Sarah Waters writing and is a sensational follow up to the authors successful debut novel The Silent Companions and in my opinion is far superior to it.

Put this on your must read list. It will be published in September and you can pre-order it now so you have something to look forward to when the nights begin to draw in.

I received my advance copy of #TheCorset from #NetGalley
My thanks to Raven Books, home of deliciously dark books

I absolutely loved The Silent Companions, so i've been desperate to get my hands on this for a while. Gladly, it really didn't disappoint.

With The Corset, Purcell has written another dark, Gothic story, with realistically chilling undertones. The two main female characters are gripping and believable, and their two distinctive PoV voices work so well along side each other.

As the story unfolds and the plot begins to unravel, Purcell expertly builds to a quite shocking and surprising ending, that i can honestly say i didn't see coming. A brilliant book.

The Corset is a gothic historical novel that unfolds a strange narrative of a girl who seems to be able to kill with a needle and thread, and the woman who visits her in prison and hears her story. Dorothea is a young, fairly well-off Victorian woman whose now-dead mother instilled a belief in charitable work in her. During her visits to Oakgate Prison she meets Ruth Butterham, a sixteen-year-old girl accused of murder. Dorothea wants to test her theory about the shape of a person's skull determining their life and morality, and Ruth seems perfect. Instead, Ruth starts telling her story and Dorothea finds her belief stretched and a chilling connection with her own life.

Purcell's The Silent Companions was a creepy tale of a young widow, but The Corset goes even further to create a classic gothic story that highlights injustice and being a victim through the use of menace and possible unexplainable phenomena. Moving between the perspectives of Dorothea as she visits Ruth and considers marriage to escape her father, and Ruth's story of the strange power of her sewing allows for Purcell to highlight the similarities and differences between the two women. Madness, revenge, and different kinds of imprisonment run throughout the narrative and it also plays with perspective, leading to a satisfying ending again in a classic gothic style.

The Corset feels like a natural successor to late eighteenth and early nineteenth gothic novels in its combination of a strange unfolding narrative of death and revenge and its use of this narrative to expose oppression, imprisonment, and kinds of oppression. It is likely to be another popular gothic read from Purcell, with hints of Sarah Waters' Affinity in subject matter and a main character whose name makes it impossible not to think of Middlemarch.