This book seemed entirely up my street from the blurb, but despite the strong and enticing beginning, just didn't seem to vibe with me. I'll certainly return to it in future; just not right now.

I loved this - it reminded me of scary stories I read as a child, but is nonetheless a sophisticated, chilling, gothic read that unsettles well

https://lynns-books.com/2023/07/25/the-other-lives-of-miss-emily-white-by-aj-elwood/
4 of 5 stars
My Five Word TL:DR Review : Beautifully Written and Deliciously Gothic

It’s been a little while since I read this particular book and I confess that I like to write my reviews whilst everything is still fresh in my mind and I still have that raw emotion, one way or the other, that the book left me with. As it happens, in spite of the length of time that has elapsed I still have a very clear idea of how this book made me feel because it was one of those overpowering feelings that made me feel like this book was especially for me. I loved the writing, so beautiful and evocative, the setting so gothic and full of potential for shadows and creepiness and the period in which this is set which, to be blunt, really appeals to me. This is definitely my type of book and I was keen to pick it up as often as possible.

This is a story of loneliness and not fitting in and how this can turn to obsession when the slightest comfort or attention is bestowed.

The year is 1864 and Ivy is sent from her family home to a boarding school for young ladies. As a farmer’s daughter she doesn’t really fit in, although the Seminary is a little down at heel to say the least. Ivy is something of an outcast and quite unhappy, a feeling that is made worse by the recent loss of her sister. When a new teacher (Emily Blanc no less) is appointed all the girls are excited to meet her but this quickly turns to disappointment when she fails to meet their exacting standards and she is quickly scorned. Except for Ivy, who becomes attached quite quickly to this new addition to the teaching staff.

I’m not going to go into any more detail about the plot. As I mentioned above this quickly spirals into something a little more menacing. The girls become increasingly hysterical about odd goings on at the school, seeming to work each other into a frenzy. They imagine ghosts and dark menaces and although most of this is based on flimsy here-says the students are all being whipped up into a fervour that spells trouble.

This is a book of smoke and mirrors. ‘What ifs’ and ‘maybes’. And, frankly you have to keep reading to find out what’s going on. There is a mystery and also something of a tragedy (or two) but the real winning element for me is the gothic atmosphere which really builds up the tension and leaves you jumping at your own shadow.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this, the story is perhaps a little fantastical, one of those plots that borders on magical realism although at the same time it would be easy enough to imagine those elements were simply mildly suggestive. And the writing is lovely, very easy to get along with and perfectly paced.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

I enjoyed this gothic novel. The tropes it plays with are very well-worn, but Elwood deploys them effectively. Absorbing and fun!

AJ Elwood/ Alison Littlewood is of course a master of suspense whether in a modern or a historical setting, so I was expecting great things from The Other Lives of Miss Emily White, but I have to say this story surpassed even them.

Introduced by Ivy, an elderly woman living alone in the 1920s, the action takes place 60 years before in an unremarkable Yorkshire Victorian girls' school, a slightly down at heel establishment devoted to applying some polish to young ladies so that they can find themselves husbands. The teenage Ivy is a farmer's daughter who's looked down on by her snobbish classmates - and there's a whiff of scandal about her. Children can, of course, be very cruel and while there's little overt bullying here, Ivy is very much a target. She recalls how how poverty brought her to this place and what it means to her to have been wrenched from her happy life and especially from her sister, Daisy.

The arrival of a new teacher, Miss White/ Madam Blanc, brings drama to Miss Dawson's Seminary from the very beginning. Drama, tragedy, and the malign attention of Ivy's peers as they sense a potential victim in the young schoolmistress. So begins a battle of wills, made more confusing and dangerous by apparent sightings of Miss White in places where she's not.

There are secrets here - secrets belonging to Ivy, secrets belonging to Sophia, Miss White's chief tormentor, and secrets belonging to Miss White herself. Secrets, and layers of pretence. The farmers' daughters being made into gentlewomen. The horse, painted with a blaze to resemble his dead predecessor. The solidly English teachers, always called by French names. Perhaps, too, a level of pretence so fundamental that it's subconscious, invisible to those taking part.

Pretence, and doublings. Around them swirl the currents of emotions of those young ladies, isolated from their families and being moulded into something they're not - the book opens with a chilling prospectus written by Erasmus Darwin, setting out how girls are to be educated. You can sense the contradictions and the turmoil. Who, exactly, is Miss White? What are her intentions regarding Ivy? What are Ivy's intentions, if it comes to that? Just what is going on? It's a deeply uneasy setting even more a whiff of the supernatural appears...

I felt this story really captured the confusions of late childhood/ early adulthood, an age when reality is malleable and outrageous fancies may be spun into truth. That, and a sense of hauntedness, drive a taut and lingering horror story that will remain with you long after you close the book.

School obviously is a place of learning facts and skills we need in life but also where we learn a few things about people. It’s where we can see children can be very cruel especially in a pack plus we have the weird idea of the authority of teachers who will occasionally shock us with glimpses that they actually have a life outside of a classroom. I know one of my junior schoolteachers whom the kids loved to see had a much darker side that only came to light decades later. Therefore, it is fitting that A J Ellwood takes us into an excellent mysterious gothic thriller that will unsettle the reader in so many ways.

Ivy tells us of her schooldays in 1864 when she was sent by her wealthy grandparents to Miss Dawson’s Seminary out in the wealthy but isolated countryside. But Ivy has working class roots, mourns the loss of her beloved sister Daisy, and constantly feels an outsider – in particular rejected by the oldest girl Sophia whom the other girls in class idolise and who ensures that Ivy feels alone. For Ivy relief appears to come with the arrival of Emily White or as the customs of the school to encourage language studies Mademoiselle Blanc. Mis White and Ivy bond over a love of drawing and seem also to connect as being outsiders. But Miss White soon finds herself with a confrontation with Sophia that spirals out of one moment of teenage rebellion but constantly escalates with allegations of Miss White having strange powers and a malevolent darker double people claim to see around the school; this conflict has an escalating impact on the school and their pupils. Tensions rise; sides are taken; and danger waits for everyone.

AJ Ellwood has created a brilliant gothic thriller that constantly plays with questions of identity and requiring us as the reader just like Ivy to ponder whose side to take. Throughout the novel is the motif of the characters in the Victorian spinning image toy known as the zoetrope where to give life to one image you need to have multiple images of one person all slightly different. This is very much applicable to our trip to Miss Dawson’s school where every character we meet has a different and often conflicting facet to them which makes us have to decide which is their true self. Our setting is a place that says they focus on improvement but we particularly as modern readers will see this is a place designed to ensure the girls are turned into the women that Victorian Society expects – capable yet obedient wives skilled in the softer arts and not to think at all about trying to be their own women in any way. This duality also applies to the pupils who on the surface are dulcet, pretty maids all in a row but as Ivy knows are very much a clique and happy to immediately reject you if they find you wanting.

All of which means Ellwood has created an environment that just needs a spark to really expose the darker side of this school and a simple case of disobedience towards Miss White by Sophia quickly cascades to Sophia claiming (thanks to her family’s apparent ‘sensitivities’) she claims the nee teacher has a dark presence around her. One that starts to impact the school and hurt the girls. Ivy as our narrator sits at first on the side-lines but then starts to focus on defending Miss White from the girl’s cruelty but the escalations soon get more and more noticeable and bloodier. Ellwood capture that innocent petty cruelty of children perfectly and we all know what that can lead to.

Ellwood has very cleverly set the story up for a modern reader to have our own view of this world and as we are twenty-first century adults we also may better understand than Ivy why so many pupils fall under Sophia’s spell of believing dark magic is afoot. Which makes it really interesting is when we too via Ivy see very macabre and strange things start to happen in front of us. This novel has an increasing pressured and darkened presence to match our alleged presence Sophia’s group claim is a doppelgänger of Miss White’s devising to bring death and disaster for all. Fittingly for this period we have a clash of scepticism versus occultism in the tale but which side is right? As a reader I’m then torn between my natural instinct to support the underdogs against rich upper-class bullies and yet also being pulled into thinking something I’m seeing isn’t quite adding up. As Icy relates to us her experience as a teenage girl we only get her worldview of events as they unfurl, and she is therefore more an unconsciously unreliable narrator as she too is not in all the facts. Miss White is very much an enigmatic character which helps aid the confusion as we see her as a breath of fresh air that Ivy desperately needs in this cloying school; but we slowly find Miss White to be a woman with her own secrets and one seemingly prepared to fight back against her accusers. For me this novel is like one of those Victorian drawings where at first, we just see a lady looking at the mirror but soon after a few prompts and revelations realise that a mysterious older stranger woman is also staring back at us. Ellwood cleverly maintains the tension as to whether what we see is human nature at its worst or something more supernatural all the way throughout the story right up until the last few devastating chapters allowing us as reader to finally take a step back and put it all together; plus applaud the skill Ellwood that deployed to have taken us on this journey.

The Other Lives of Miss Emily White is a gothic thriller that really casts a spell on the reader as much as our new teacher seems to cast one on her school and pupils. Full of surprises and also a constantly dark and foreboding atmosphere that has the added joy of us readers becoming unwitting accomplices to what happens. We will take sides for the best of reasons and then perhaps change our minds; and then further change them. This book is the best kind of shared dark secret – one you’ll want to explore all the way to the end staying up late and then bringing other readers along with you. Strongly recommended for fans of the gothic!

This may well be my book of the year. I know it's only April, but I was captivated by Ivy's tale set in an all girl's school. Maybe like the other girls at the school, I fell under Miss White's spell.

Here's the blurb:

1864. Banished from her parents’ farm to a boarding school for young ladies, Ivy feels utterly alone. In a crumbling and isolated seminary that has seen better days, she is shunned by the other pupils for her working-class origins, and mourns for her sister, who died not long after she was sent away.

Hope comes in the form of a new teacher, Miss Emily White, but almost immediately, suspicions are raised that she is not all she should be. Ivy is captivated, yet as her devotion grows, odd reports begin to circulate that Miss White has been glimpsed in the garden picking flowers whilst also teaching a class, leaving the school but stalking the halls at the same time.

As increasingly strange rumours abound, Ivy’s obsession spins out of control, and with Emily White’s future at stake, she will do anything to keep her only friend.


I read this book in a matter of days. Had life not been in the way, I'm sure it would have been a one-sitting read. Ivy finds a new friend with shared passions when Miss White joins the school, but soon unusual things start to happen, with students saying they have seen the teacher in multiple places at the same time. It seems Miss White has a doppelganger. Ivy remains close and tries to defend her teacher and friend when the other girls close in and decide she is a harbinger of death and evil. There were moments in this book that reminded me of reading The Crucible back in my school years.

I admire the author for not only the storytelling but also the underlying elements of obsession and loneliness and the impact of not meeting societal expectations that unravel as the book draws to a close. These had me in tears. I would be proud to have written this book and would love to hear some discussion about how it was written and the history behind it. It also takes talent to write a book that has an uncanny feel to it. This is hard to capture in a short story, but to maintain this throughout an entire novel is to be applauded.

I'll be recommending this everywhere. 5 stars.

Thank you Titan for the earc of The Other Lives of Emily White.
Following Ivy, a solitary young girl sent to a finishing school. She finally feels like a connection is made with the arrival of Mademoiselle Blanc, but all is not as it seems.
A good addition to victorian, dark Acedemia. Enjoyable book with surprising twists

The Other Lives of Miss Emily White is a haunting and mesmerising tale.

I was hooked on this one from the first page. Elwood has crafted an intricately beautiful tale of obsession and loneliness.

Ivy is sent off to a boarding school for young ladies by her grandparents to learn how to be a proper and dutiful daughter, grand-daughter and someday a wife. Feeling isolated by the other girls, she befriends her teacher, Miss White (or Mademoiselle Blanc) and quickly develops an obsession with her, defending her at every turn as the other students throw out accusations against the woman she is so desperate to keep to herself.

It is clear from the beginning that Ivy is delusional, willing to be believe whichever narrative proves Emily White’s innocence denying what she has seen with her own eyes - her teacher in two places at once! That she has created in her head a vision of the relationship between them being more than what it really is.

This is a cleverly written gripping historical ghost story. I couldn’t put it down.

Many thanks to Titan Books and Net Galley for the ARC.

Sent away to boarding school, Ivy is all alone and friendless until an enigmatic new teacher Mademoiselle Blanc aka Miss Emily White arrives and the pair become close.

The other students take an immediate dislike to Miss White and spread rumours about her having an evil doppelganger. When several girls fall ill or start acting strangely, it seems an old book has prophesied the events happening, but was is the link to Miss White and can she really be trusted?