The Lost Ones

This book is brilliant - I was drawn right in from the very first page and found it difficult to put down, despite it being relatively long.

The story starts in a church - we meet Stella Marcham hearing her musings about church and religion and understand straight away her life has been touched by tragedy. The story is set in 1917, the First World War is underway and although this is not a story about the war as such, we get an insight into the wasted lives of those young and inexperienced sent to war and the impact on their families. As time progresses, Stella's story is revealed, both as a narrative from her but also through her reliving past events that give the reader a taste for the life she had and that was so cruelly taken away from her. In her grief, she is threatened with being sent to an asylum until her sisters husband asks her to go to his house to support the pregnant Madeline who is having problems of her own.

Madeline is convinced that her home, Grayswick is haunted. Madeleine's husband, Hector believes she is suffering hysteria due her pregnancy. Stella agrees to go to Greyswick and soon after also becomes convinced that something supernatural is occurring. Stella's maid, Annie accompanied her and Stella suspects she knows more than she is disclosing. Madeleine's mother in law, Lady Brightwell, is not prepared to humour the allegations that a child is haunting Greyswick and has a plan of her own to dispel this nonsense.

So, do the last inhabitants of Greyswick have a story that needs to be told - or is the power of suggestion combined with female hysteria enough to explain the unusual goings on?

This book is amazing - Stella's character is just brilliant. She's so devastated and yet we always get a glimpse of her inner strength. She's perceptive and speaks her mind and does not suffer fools gladly. In 1917 I'm sure any man would have found her quite a handful! She has so much self respect I just couldn't help but like her. Mr Shears too is brilliant - I expected not to like him but he has a story of his own that mean that means that by the end of this tale the reader really understands and appreciates him. My only disappointment about this book is that we don't really get to see what happens to him - I had an ending in mind for him and although we get a little hint this was likely to be the outcome, as a very unimaginative reader, I think I'd have liked some reassurance. Mrs Henge, the housekeeper, is a real intriguing character that put me in mind if Mrs Danvers (from Rebecca) almost straight away. I enjoyed the way my suspicion was provoked almost straight away and I felt the need to pay attention to her throughout. I disliked her almost immediately and thoroughly enjoyed disliking her - even though the reader isn't aware whether this impression is correct or not until almost the end of the book.

There is some description of war, very significant injury, death, child death, supernatural suggestion, mention of rape and domestic abuse which some readers may find distressing. However, I can be quite a sensitive reader but found that there was enough information for me to truly empathise with the characters but not so much as to consider it unnecessarily distressing.

This is not a story with a conventional happy ever after - it's about secrets, lies and self preservation. It's a hauntingly compelling read and I devoured every single page. Although this a very dark tale with so much sadness - in itself, it's not sad. It has a very gothic feel - similar to Jane Eyre or Rebecca. Despite this, it is definitely a tale all of its own that is simply brilliant, especially as this is a first by this author.

For her debut novel Anita Frank has managed to produce the quintessential English ghost story, a tradition and style that includes 19th century luminaries such as Dickens and Collins and incorporates present day writers such as Sarah Waters and Susan Hill. I started reading this on a most unseasonably windswept summer Sunday afternoon and was still reading well into the night. The author has managed to create that atmosphere of dread and foreboding that is a requisite for such tales. The supernatural terrors that lie in the background are merged with the real life horror and carnage that is occurring at the same time across the battlefields of the First World War.

Set in 1917 we find Stella Marcham haunted and trumatised by the death of her fiancé and who herself has recently returned from nursing the dying and wounded in France. She is now asked by her brother in law to stay with her pregnant sister, Madeleine, at Greyswick their country mansion. On arriving she finds Madeleine in a state of unease and it is not long before strange noises are heard that point to something that is far from right in the house.

The writing was wonderfully descriptive and one could easily picture the house and gardens devoid due to the war of the usual number of servants becoming increasingly decayed and shabby. Layer by layer the tension is built up as the full horror of the past is revealed. Fear, suspicion and trepidation seep through the very foundations of Greyswick as an unearthly presence seemingly demands justice for past wrongs. For a lover of the traditional ghost story this was an exquisite read and if you like this genre then I do not think you will be disappointed.

It’s 1917, and the consequences of war have hit hard for Stella Marcham. Consumed with grief, she leaves her nursing post in France to head home to be looked after by her parents.

She is treated as an addle-minded feeble woman, but she slowly, slowly begins to surface from her grief. Then, she gets the call to visit and help support her sister through her pregnancy.

She heads to imposing Greyswick, the home of her brother-in-law, where all is not as it seems.

I really enjoyed reading this. It’s a very slow start, but somehow it wasn’t a chore spending time with Stella before the main action happened - which doesn’t happen until quite far into the book.

I’m not sure if the author intended us to guess the main mystery so early on (about two thirds of the way in), but I got it faster than Stella did. There were twists and turns a-plenty, and the story kept surprising me, even though I thought I knew what would happen.

I would recommend this if you enjoy supernatural stories, but don’t expect to be scared whilst reading it. It builds a wonderful atmosphere throughout the book, but I wasn’t frightened at any point, although I was certainly intrigued.

This is a good story, and not at all predictable. However, I didn't feel it achieved the sense of creepiness which it really needed, and I was never really convinced by the period setting.

Quite easily, hands down, one of the best books I have read all year!

Packed cover to cover with spine tingling atmosphere and goosebump inducing tension, this book is all set to give you chills.

Writing a review for this book is proving hard as I really don’t want to give away any spoilers, and for me, giving away any spoilers is a pretty shitty thing to do as they have the potential to spoil it for new readers. It’s like watching a film with my daughter, one that she has already seen. It always ends up with me not needing to continue watching it as she can’t help herself, she tells me what is about to happen before it happens! Where is the fun in that! So I will make sure to not give any away so that you can be as stunned as I was with the turn of events as they race across the pages.

And who said fiction wasn’t educational? Thanks to this book I have some great new words added to my vocabulary! Wonderful words such as idiosyncrasies, acquiesced, sagacity, inveigling, and vociferous.

Set in 1917, Stella Marcham has returned from France where she had been working as a VAD nurse, after the death of her fiancé, Gerald, an officer that was killed on the battlefield. Back living with her father and stepmother, they are worried about her as she has taken Geralds death hard, drowning in grief, to the extent their family doctor has been suggesting that maybe Stella should be admitted into a psychiatric hospital.

Stella’s sister, Madeleine is expecting a child and her husband has sent her away to live with his mother in the countryside for her safety, away from London and the threats of bombings. However Madeline is not happy at Greyswick, a rambling country manor house, so her husband asks Stella if she would join her sister at Greyswick for company and also to reassure her that there is nothing in the house to be worried about. Madeline is convinced there is something not right with the house, she has been hearing a young child crying, and footsteps in the night that only she hears and that some of the people in the house have it in for her.

As Stella and her maid Annie Burrows arrive at Greyswick, it isn’t long for them to also notice that there is something not right, and they both can hear what Madeleine has been hearing. Not quite what Hector wanted when he asked Stella to go and stay with his wife. In a bid to prove to his distraught wife that the house isn’t haunted, he calls in the help of Mr Sheers, a man of science who has had some success in uncovering some charlatans who claimed they could converse with the dead, and using science was able to explain away all the claims the charlatans made.

However, things take a different turn when the master of the house, Hector, also encounters a presence and occurrences that couldn’t just be dismissed, so in a bid to reassure the women he sets out to find a vicar from a different borough to preform and exorcism and cleanse the house. The non believer of the house, Mr Sheers goes along with it with the hopes that it would cleanse the women’s minds of the hysteria they are both feeling. But as the exorcism gets underway, things start to happen, things that cant be explained rationally and ends with a bleeding vicar and a very traumatised wife.

Annie Burrows has always been deemed as different all her life, talking to herself, or to people no one else can see and it is Annie’s help the Stella requires. She is convinced Annie has a special gift, just as her father had before her. She can hear and sometimes see spirits. So after the failed exorcism, Stella pleads with the maid Annie to speak up and help.

Annie had drawn aside the porous veil that separates this world from the next, just as I once believed her father had on the night of the fire, enabling him to rescue Lydia.

So with Annie’s help she tells them that it is Lucien that is haunting the house. Lucien Arthur Brightwell at the tender age of 5 had a tragic accident, he fell down the stairs from the nursery and died. “It is Lucien, but I can’t make him go. He’s waited to long, he won’t stop until he gets what he wants. What he wants is justice.

Misfortune stalked the halls of Greyswick – it had stolen a child.

Mr Sheers had his theories and explanations to the phenomenonable goings on, citing telekinesis as one scientific explanation, and the lady of the house, Lady Brightwell, and her companion Miss Scott are quick to agree with all of Mr Sheers explanations. As well as the housekeeper, Mrs Henge.

There are lots of shadows in Greyswick. Mrs Henge seems to occupy most of them.

Knowing her sister will never be save or settled in the house until whatever is happening inside those walls has been sorted, Madeleine goes back home to stay with her parents whilst Stella, Annie and Mr Sheen stay behind to investigate the houses history and the secrets the house has kept silenced until now. Now the truth wants to come out and it will change their lives forever, with far reaching effects.

This house is full of terrible secrets, Mr Sheers, secrets the dead are no longer content to let lie.

It is from these investigations into Greyswik’s and its employees that truths begin to come to light with some shocking twists along the way, ones that you won’t see coming, leading to some of the best twists I have read this year. Unpredictable and astounding! Publication day for this book is set for 31 October 2019 and Halloween could not be a more perfect day for this book to come to live in the world!

It is available for preorder now so you get your copy release day – Halloween 🎃

A massive thank you to the author Anita Frank, publishers HQ and NetGalley for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest and independent review.

An astounding book, I couldn’t put it down. It never felt predictable, and if it strayed close to the line of predictability a shock yanked it back every time.