Some books you just know from the first words you’re going to love and this was one of them for me. This book is my favourite kind of historical novel. It has everything you need to make a classic gothic novel; a big old deteriorating house, strange paranormal goings on and a real sense of atmosphere and mystery. This book is full of intrigue and really great characters especially the main character Louisa Drew.

It is 1925 and Louisa Drew is asked to photograph Clewer Hall in Sussex and it’s contents for an auction house. Desperate for money after having recently remarried and seven months pregnant she accepts the commission. Unknown to Louise Clewer Hall was host to an infamous seance in 1896 which was widely reported in the press at the time. The seance has haunted the family’s lives ever since. In one final attempt to break the seances legacy the lady of the house has decided to recreate the original seance inviting as many of the original attendees as possible before the family moves. Louisa although only there to take photos finds herself becoming more and more involved in the secrets of the house.

This is a beautifully written gothic mystery full of suspense and ghostly happenings and it’s a brilliant read. Photographer Louisa Drew is commissioned to take an inventory of items and rooms at the once impressive but now dilapidated Clewer Hall. Heavily pregnant and risking the wrath of her mother in law and husband Louisa makes her mind up to go ignoring her mother in laws warning of sinister going’s on at the hall in the past and so starts a story full to atmosphere and menace as Louisa finds out their is to be a re-creation of a seance that happened in the past that ended badly and once more attended by Arthur Conan Doyle and the very strange spiritualist medium Ada Watkins.
More strange things start to occur with ghostly sightings and Louisa begins to feel her life and that of her baby may be threatened.
What I loved about this book was the ability of the written word to transport you to another place and time and to feel the atmosphere and that is all down to the superb writing from the talented Rhiannon Ward.
So if you love a good gothic tale then you have it here I really loved the book and can highly recommend it.
My thanks to NetGalley and Orion Publishing Group, Trapeze for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Really enjoyed this, and the cover is stunning. Gothic gorgeousness. I hope it flies (spookily into the night).

Set over dual timelines at the end of the 19th Century and following WW1, this is a historical novel that reminded me of books written at the time. (This is a compliment!) The descriptions allowed me to envisage the house where much of the book is set, and the eccentric cast of characters. I think that it is a story that will transfer well to the small or big screen.
While #TheQuickening is in part a ghost story it provides interesting commentary on the position of women, changes in society and the overwhelming loss and grief that was the reality for those living at the time.
I enjoyed the novel, it is well written and definitely a page turner.
Thank you to Rhiannon Ward, the publishers and #Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review #TheQuickening

It is 1925 and Louisa Drew, widowed in WWI, is now remarried and pregnant. However, although delighted at her forthcoming baby, she is feeling hemmed in and frustrated. Husband Edwin is very different from her first husband and is resistant to her working as a photographer . So, when she is given the commission to go to Clewer Hall and photograph Colonel Clewer’s collections, which are to be sold, she jumps at the chance. Not questioning the odd circumstances or her mother in law’s reaction to the name of the Hall, she flees before Edwin can stop her.

Clewer Hall is infamous for a séance which took place in 1896 and, unbeknownst to Louisa, there are plans to recreate the event. Guests include Mr Conan Doyle, as well as spiritualist, Ada Watkins, who came in 1896 and has remained, a contentious visitor in the house. Before long, Louisa is aware of odd happenings – a piano playing, a child glimpsed in the grounds, footprints in the snow…

This is a wonderfully atmospheric book, which has some excellent characters. I really warmed to the heavily pregnant, Louisa, who is so unsure about her life and so reluctant to leave Clewer Hall, despite her doubts, and return to London, and Edwin. There is also the shadow of the war, which hangs over almost everyone in the novel. A good read and I hope we see more of Louisa in future books. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

The Quickening

The Quickening by Rhiannon Ward, is a gorgeous read. Set in England, in 1925, it concerns the photographer, Louisa Drew. As one of the few women to earn her living professionally, and in a ‘man’s’ job, Louisa is quite remarkable. Like so many women in post-WWI Europe, she is suffering loss: Her first husband died in the war, and her six-year-old twin boys were victims of the 1918 flu epidemic. All the love in her life died with them.

She did, however, re-marry – this relationship being more of a practical arrangement than the love-match of her first marriage. Much to her new husband’s chagrin, Louise continues to work, whenever she is commissioned to do so.

When we meet her, Louise is coming towards the end of her pregnancy with the first child of her second marriage. She receives a commission to photograph the contents of Clewer Hall, which the owners plan on auctioning in order to fund their relocation to India. The amount offered to her is substantial, so there is no question of Louise turning the work down, even if she knows her husband will be displeased.

And now, the story gets even more interesting – part social commentary, part ghost story, part whodunnit, Rhiannon Ward manages to plait together these strands with a lightness that draws the reader in, rather than making them feel they are being ‘lectured’ or ‘schooled’ in any way.

Her time in Clewer Hall introduces Louise to a host of interesting characters – seen and unseen – as the house itself seems to communicate with her. Unwittingly, Louise is drawn into a mystery, and ends up solving it in the most dramatic way.

The Quickening by Rhiannon Ward is a Gothic mystery with a ghostly twist, Set in the aftermath of World War 1 , the book follows a photographer Louisa Drew to a crumbling mansion in the English countryside where she has been commissioned to photograph the contents for an auction, the proceeds of which will fund the straitened family's planned move to India. Widowed during the war, and mourning the deaths of her twin sons in the Spanish Flu epidemic that followed, Louisa craved a family and stability, and settled into a marriage with the rather conservative Edwin , and despite knowing that he will not approve, she accepts the job since the imminent arrival of her new child will further stretch the already tight family finances. From the moment of her arrival at Clewer Hall she feels like something is not right, and when she learns about a mysterious seance that happened in the house in 1896 ,where the family was apparently cursed her sense of unease only deepens. A plan to recreate the infamous night and bring back as many of the original participants as possible does little to allay her fears , and the events that come to pass set her on a course to uncover the secrets of the past, but at what cost?
I loved the setting of this book, the author does a fantastic job of creating a sense of time and place , that strange period between the wars where the class system was starting to break down and so many of the large estates that dotted the country could no longer survive. Clewer Hall was so vividly described that it almost felt like a character in its own right, it was the perfect setting for the deliciously creepy story that unfolds. The post war setting also added an element of tragedy which was highlighted not just by Louisa's losses but by the deaths of the three sons of the house, which could be seen as the "curse" at work. The majority of the book is written from Louisa's perspective thought there are brief chapters set on the night of the original seance interspersed throughout, and eventually the two narratives combine to reveal the truth of the mystery that lies at the heart of the book. Since so much of the story is focused on Louisa, it is important that the reader can become invested in her and her story, and I have to say I really did find myself caught up in the drama. There is a real sense of tension throughout the book , an ominous feeling that the author has done a wonderful job of building from the early stages of the book to the decidedly dramatic crescendo. All the expected cast are present and correct, the Butler, the loyal Housekeeper , the gossipy maid, the spinster daughter , and of course the mysterious ghost like child who appears in the gardens , and adds the necessary supernatural touch. The ghostly element of the story is nicely worked into the overall narrative which moves at a surprisingly fast pace, thanks to both the short chapters and the feeling of a countdown to the arrival of Louisa's baby. I found only one real flaw with the book, the author introduces a romance plot line which seemed rushed, unlikely and completely unnecessary , and I feel the book would have been much stronger without it, but over all I really enjoyed it as a nice addition to the genre.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Thank you for sending me a copy of The Quickening. I requested it because I have a much enjoyed Ms Ward’s Derbyshire based detective fiction. However, while it is very apparent that this is written to the same high standards, I’m afraid that the subject matter is such that I couldn’t give it a fair review. Ghost stories and tales of the supernatural are simply not my thing and I couldn’t possibly assess it in a way that would make it sound appealing to anyone who is more of a mind to appreciate the work.

My NetGalley profile describes my wants in an ideal book - female lead character, historical fiction, gothic elements - and The Quickening ticks every box for me. I devoured this book in a single day. Is it perfect? No - and I pride myself on giving honest reviews, so I will state in this review what let it down for me - but it's near enough to everything I want in a novel to get a five-star rating from me.

The plot is compelling: lead character Louisa is a semi-retired photographer, eight months pregnant to her second husband after her first died in the Great War, and her sons soon after in the Spanish flu pandemic. Grief hangs heavy over this story, with Louisa taking up a job photographing items for auction at Clewer Hall, whose matriarch still grieves the three sons she lost in the same war, and who has taken to keeping a medium around her in the hopes of maintaining contact with the dead. Ostensibly there only as a professional, Louisa is drawn into the mysteries of Clewer Hall and its past, as Mrs Clewer prepares to host a séance with her medium companion, reenacting an infamous original held decades earlier where curses and prophecies came to light. The story is told with appropriate pace and flow, largely taking place from Louisa's point of view but with third-person flashbacks to the original séance which entwine with what Louisa tells us to gradually reveal the truth.

The writing is remarkably atmospheric: Clewer Hall can stand alongside Manderley as a vividly-described mansion whose very architecture has become as haunted by its past as its inhabitants. Like Mrs Clewer, the hall is a crumbling shadow of what it once was, and through effective and tense writing I felt Louisa's fear and uncertainty myself as she delved into its mysteries.

The characters are, for the most part, well-developed and believable, though this is where my one criticism lies - it is hard to detail without spoilers, but it shouldn't give much away to say that I found one of the secondary characters not developed enough to believe the depth of a friendship apparently formed over the course of the story. Louisa herself is a believable and impressive character, a kind of woman not uncommon after the First World War who has learned to live with overwhelming grief, who has tasted independence and is kept from it by a husband who did not see how society coped in wartime without men, and medium Ada is fascinating and ambiguous - I longed to know her back story, but keeping it from us ensures she remains a mysterious character and the reader can make their own decisions.

Overall, I found this to be an excellent read, and would highly recommend it to readers who enjoy gothic historical fiction or atmospheric stories of the supernatural. I will certainly be looking out for whatever Rhiannon Ward writes next.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Orion Publishing for allowing me to read this novel in exchange for a review.

I'm a sucker for a gothic ghost story set in a country house, and this did not disappoint. I found it a compelling and atmospheric read, with a sense of the sinister about it. The story follows Lousia, a photographer, who agrees to photograph items for auction at Clewer Hall while she's still heavily pregnant. Having lost her twin sons in the Spanish Flu of 1918 - very apt for the time we're living in! However, Clewer Hall was host to an infamous séance in 1896 which is being reenacted in 1925 - and Louise turns up to photograph the items on the same day as the reenactment.

The book uses many of the tropes of the gothic ghost story genre, but that's fine with me. I thought all of the characters were subtle but very well crafted, a testament to Rhiannon Ward's writing. The story also has quite short chapters, will I really like, as it adds to the pace of the novel - especially with Louisa's due date approaching. The writing is reminiscent of Laura Purcell. A must-read for my fellow gothic fiction fans! :)

If I’ve read a book that sets up a character’s backstory more quickly or effectively, I can’t recall it. From the off, Sarah Ward shows us enough of Louisa’s interesting life thus far to want to follow her through the story.
To start with, The Quickening reminded me of Jane Healey’s The Animals at Lockwood Manor – a professional woman sent to a decaying country house in which relationships are strained and there are unexplained happenings. Almost inevitably for a story set in 1925, the First World War looms large. There’s hardly a person in it who didn’t lose someone and that feels realistic to me.
I’m not a fan of very short chapters but that didn’t detract much from the desire to keep reading, to find out just what had gone in the house all those years ago. I found all the characters well drawn; none felt too stereotypical even though the usual bases were covered – the butler, the cook, the spinster daughter.
I read this story quickly. Having recently been switching between a chapter of a novel and a chapter of a non-fiction book on my Kindle, I kept reading this right through. It had enough false leads and twists to keep me guessing but not so many as to become irritating. I recommend this if you fancy a tale with a hint of the otherworldy set firmly in interwar Britain.

And we have a new addition to the gothic, historical fiction pantheon and a most welcome and accomplished one at that. Reminiscent of Laura Purcell and Simone St. Louis, the story is set in the aftermath of WWI and the Spanish flu epidemic, at a time when spiritualism and seances were very popular (so much loss pulled people towards a chance to see their loved ones once more). A heavily pregnant photographer is commissioned to work in a creepy manor, apparently inimical to children. Secrets are buried, ghosts spotted,strange happenings afoot. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

This was a very unique storyline. I really enjoyed it, but have never read about a seance before. This poor women had such a bad run of things. You can’t help getting sucked in to her story. A must read if you’re board with the usual top 10 books.

This is an excellently thrilling gem of a ghost story.
Set in the 1920s our protagonist is a heavily pregnant photographer, who is sent to Clewer Hall, a formerly grand house with a heavily reduced post-war staff. Things are already eerie before she discovers that the seance which gave the house its rather troubled reputation is due to be repeated in several days.
This is a gothic masterpiece and made me think of such works as Henry James's "The turn of the screw." It is thoroughly gripping and you are never sure which way the narrative is going to take you. I enjoyed it hugely and hope that Ms Ward continues writing in this genre.

This was a spooky little treasure of a book and even though the sun was blazing outside the atmosphere of lonely, haunted, grasping coldness was exquisitely drawn by the author.
Louisa Drew has faced tragedy in her life, losing her first husband in WW1 and her sons in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Despite this, she soldiers on having built a career as a photographer despite that not being seen as entirely fitting for a woman and settled in a rather unhappy marriage to her second husband.
She takes on a commission at the crumbling, isolated Clewer Hall. The family are selling up and moving abroad in an attempt to leave the ghosts of the past behind. She has to spend a week there, nearing the end of her pregnancy, photographing key items to raise funds for the move. She welcomes the escape towards independence and from the oppressive atmosphere in her own home, but soon becomes embroiled in past mysteries, realising that not everyone gathered at the house has her best interests at heart.
Who is, or was, the child who drifts through the grounds? Who savagely attacks her while she works on her photographs in the old Ice House? And just who can she trust as the spectres of the past crowd in while some family members deny their existence?
I did feel the ending and escape from her unhappy marriage was a little trite, but I won’t mention that in social media reviews as that’s just my personal take on it. I don’t think she would have acted in that way so quickly and it comes across as a bit too fortuitous that she meets a man involved in the mystery who is also willing to fly in the face of convention. However, that is a very minor quibble.
I greatly enjoyed this book and will be happy to recommend it on publication. It will be particularly suitable for curling up with by a fire and a glass of something fortifying when Winter comes round again. Best not to explore that damp wing of the house or investigate too closely if you hear piano music and a child singing though..........

There's an irresistible sense of menace about The Quickening, a feeling that something bad is going to happen. I give Rhiannon Ward all the marks for that. She has a way with terror, lending even the most banal household detail a sinister air.

Clewer Hall is a sinister old pile, riddled with damp and secrets. Its sons were taken during WW1, and the Clewer family seem mired in grief and mystery. Into this tableaux comes pregnant photographer Louisa, married but miserable with a man who she could never love.

Louisa is tasked with photographing the old Clewer art and antique collection, which is to go to auction before the Clewer family up sticks to India. During Louisa's ten day assignment at Clewer comes Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife Jean. The famous author and spiritualist is there to recreate a seance which took place years earlier. The medium, Ada, is denounced as a quack, but is seemingly accepted as part of the Clewer Hall package.

There's murder, mystery and madness. The book has its faults. I was unconvinced by Louisa's position as a post-WW1 photographer, especially as she is heavily pregnant by tearing around Clewer Hall. The Conan Doyle connection, to me, was a little unconvincing. And the whole first half of the book needs some chivvying along.

But the second half of the book is whip-smart and pacey. The conclusion is satisfactory, all ends are tied up, and the atmosphere lingers. The very, very end made me shudder.

My word did I love this book!

"Feminist gothic fiction set between the late 19th century and the early 20th century - an era of burgeoning spiritualism and the suffragette movement - that couldn't be more relevant today" - I couldn't have put it better myself!

Louisa is a photographer, quite something for a woman of her time, and pregnant to boot. She accepts a commission that takes her to Clewer Hall, a stately home with secrets lurking behind every door. She is asked to photograph the home, along with its contents as the owners are selling up and moving away (to get away from something, or someone? maybe!).

With her due date fast approaching and a completely unsupportive second husband at home, Louisa must hastily catalog everything before her baby arrives.

But, as with a good gothic mysteries, all is not as it seems. There are strange goings-on, and Louisa is determined to find out what or who is behind them.

The characters in The Quickening were fantastic. All well-formed, and entirely realistic, I do have a special place in my heart though for Louisa, our head-strong feministic protagonist, and Ada, our quirky and unreliable medium.

A dual timeline gothic ghost story set in a grand but dilapidated manor house, with intriguing characters, mystery aplenty, and more atmosphere than you could shake a stick at, The Quickening will appeal to fans of Sarah Waters, Laura Purcell, and Stacey Halls.

I loved this gothic ghost story, set in an English country house between the end of the 19th century and just after the First World War.

The protagonist Louisa, is a photographer who accepts a commission to photograph auction items at Clewer Hall during the last few weeks of her pregnancy. I really enjoyed her character and the pregnancy gave the story a race-against-time urgency as her due date approaches.

The story is atmospheric, haunting and has an intriguing mystery at the core. Pretty much a perfect read for me.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

Rhiannon Ward may be a new name but you'll probably recognise Sarah Ward. I've featured her accomplished police procedural series, set in modern-day Derbyshire, on the blog a few times before and she's definitely one of my favourite modern crime-fiction authors. Rhiannon Ward is a pseudonym for launching The Quickening, her first foray into historical fiction, although fans of Sarah's previous novels will be pleased to find another well-turned mystery, albeit one filled with the gothic and supernatural, at the heart of this latest work. 

Set in the afternmath of the First World War, The Quickening is a novel suffused with grief and its aftermath. Having lost her husband in the trenches, and her two sons from Spanish Flu soon after, Louisa Drew has resigned herself to be thankful for a life of dutiful wifehood - and a second chance at motherhood - with her staid and emotionally repressed second husband Edwin. But when her former employer offers her a lucrative commission amidst the faded glory of Clewer Hall, Louisa can't resist one last chance to live the life she thought she'd lost.

Packing her camera equipment, she heads for Clewer Hall, another house in mourning for people and opportunities lost. But are the Clewer family all that they seem? Why does no one talk about the child seen in the garden? Or the piano that Louise can hear playing within long-deserted room? What happened during that infamous seance and why does it haunt the house still? And, most importantly, what does it want with Louisa and her unborn child?

The Quickening is packed to the rafters with so much atmosphere that it lifts off the page, enveloping the reader in it's grasp. I could immediately envisage the faded glamour of Clewer Hall - from the remnants of the wisteria clinging to crumbling brickwork through to the sadness of a long-unused nursery with its broken chairs and barred windows, reading the book had me walking alongside Louisa as she gradually uncovered more and more of the house's secrets. 

Ward absoutely nails the atmosphere too. Clewer Hall, with its greatly reduced serving staff and impoverished family both still sticking rigourously to pre-War notions of social hierarchy, feels as if it is stuck in a time-warp, forever trapped on the evening of the seance in 1896. It lends a gothic tone to a novel that has a distinctly modern protagonist - Louise is forthright, determined, and has a refreshing lack of propriety that carries through Clewer Hall like a breath of fresh air.

Despite this modernity, Louisa doesn't feel out of time or place. Having developed a successful career during the war, it makes sense for Louisa to yearn to retain this freedom, whilst also hoping to regain some of the stability she has lost with the death of her husband and sons. I really got a sense of the period as a time of change through Louisa - caught between the possibilities now afforded to her as an educated and capable woman in a world where war has upset traditional hierarchies, and Victorian attitudes that still demand a level of respectability and conformity from her, even at the expense of her own happiness. It's fair to say that, as the book went on, I definitely became as invested in Louisa's own personal dilemmas as I was in the resolution of Clewer Hall's many mysteries, so much did I come to identify and empathise with her!

Without giving away any of the plot, which unravels with the skill and elegance demonstrated so ably in Ward's previous novels, I will say that The Quickening infuses a very human tale of personal folly and family tragedy with a chilling slice of the supernatural. The spooky elements aren't overplayed but, in the manner of Laura Purcell's The Silent Companions or Sarah Waters The Little Stranger, something haunts the narrative and the characters, causing both them and the reader to question their sanity and actions. It's brilliantly done and I raced through the book, desperate to know what happened back in 1896, and what would happen to Louisa and the Clewer family as a result. 

As you can probably tell, I absolutely loved The Quickening. Combining a country house mystery with a classic ghost story was always going to be a winner for me, especially when its as well-written and atmospherically evocative as this. Fans of Laura Purcell and Stacey Halls will enjoy the lush atmosphere, supernatural happenings and chilling gothic overtones, whilst fans of Ward's modern day procedurals will find a novel that retains Ward's knack for strong characters and precision plotting whist transposing them onto a new era and genre.

As much as I adore my cosy, romantic fiction, the opposite side of me loves a chilling, gothic novel, those types with the creepy, old houses shrouded in mystery, with tales of ghostly sightings, and secrets hidden away behind locked doors, so when I saw Rhiannon Ward's The Quickening available to request on NetGalley, I just knew I had to read it because it instantly appealed to me.

Immediately, I was drawn into this story, swept away by Louisa's history of grief and loss, and my interest further piqued when Louisa was asked by her employer to accept a commission regarding Clewer Hall, in which she was to go and photograph a number of items which were to be sold at auction at a later date. A keen photographer, and in need of the money due to having a baby on the way, Louisa accepts without first consulting husband Edwin because she knows he'll say no, and heads to Sussex almost immediately.

There is no denying that Rhiannon Ward is a beautifully descriptive and capable writer, and the way in which Clewer Hall was presented to me in this novel was testament to that. It was not hard for me to encapture this dark and decaying residence within my mind, to imagine the very atmosphere which occupied and swamped the many rooms and corridors beneath its roof. I could see it all so clearly as if I had been there myself, could smell the damp that lingered and see the wallpaper that had unravelled itself from the walls. Ward captured the very essence of Clewer Hall in the most beguiling of ways, rocking my mood back and forth with every new discovery that Louisa made during her time there.

'... the once austerely imposing Hall had become a wreck of itself. The bare bones were still there - the angular design, the tall chimneys and the long, imposing windows, reflecting back my gaze. Through the drizzle, though, I could see where mortar had fallen away from around the bricks, encouraging seeping damp...'
Ward's powerful descriptions of Clewer Hall were utterly mesmerising and held me captive throughout, a slave to the story she wove.

Louisa was an artistically-carved character, and I grew fond of her rather quickly. Reading from her first-person perspective, I felt as close to her as I could possibly get, almost traversing her journey beside her. I found Louisa to be quite tenacious when it came to her own life and knowing what she wanted, and this was only confirmed when, rather than consulting with Edwin of her plans to head to Clewer Hall before she left, she chose instead to leave a message with his mother to pass on to him, and he hardly crossed her mind at all once she had arrived at her destination. It's hardly surprising though, considering how much Louisa has to keep her busy once there. The home is filled with a multitude of characters for the reader to be introduced to, from Helene and Felix, to Lily and Ada, all of which were brilliantly written and so very interesting to become familiar with. Each of these people had secrets of their own and stories to tell, those of which I found utterly fascinating.

I love a novel that makes you want to switch off the lights then run across the landing to escape the darkness, a book that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand if you happen to hear a noise from somewhere within your home with no immediate explanation. This book certainly had that effect on me, so much so that I had to call it a night and switch off my Kindle, because I'd reached a point where I felt that my mind was running away with me a little bit too much. Of course, I'm sure it was entirely to do with the talk of seances and ghostly apparitions within the book that were lending to my overactive imagination, those of which I enjoyed reading about immensely, even going off-course at one point to do my own research on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the whole subject of spiritualism in the time frame that the novel was based around. So, not only did I enjoy reading this novel, but I enjoyed the other path that it had me stumbling down whilst reading it.

Amongst the chilling eerieness of this tale, there were an army of themes touched upon by Ward. Loss, grief, motherhood and sacrifices being the prominent ones I think, but also the movement of women becoming more independent than ever before, and I truly loved that this was included within the story. There was love being found in unlikely places, and the threat of something much uglier than peeling walls and darkening stains, something much more evil simmering just beneath the surface waiting to reveal itself, but only when the time is right.

The Quickening by Rhiannon Ward was a unequivocally atmospheric and deeply engrossing novel sweeping across the hands of time, leading readers down an eerie corridor of deceit, betrayal and cryptic clues leading to what will be the ultimate conclusion. The Book Babe is giving The Quickening by Rhiannon Ward a rating of four out of five. I'd like to thank Trapeze for the advanced reading copy of this book, that of which has no reflection on my providing a fair and honest review.