This is my first Paulette Kennedy novel, and I really enjoyed it. It takes place in the 1920s. Sadie has just endured a broken engagement and her financial situation is grim when she learns that her Aunt Marguerite is in poor health and needs a caregiver. Her aunt is an artist and struggles with dementia. The story has some supernatural touches also and Marguerite’s health problems were handled perfectly. The story gives Sadie plenty of opportunities to learn family history and since her mother recently died, she has scant resources for this. Marguerite has some staff already there, thank goodness, and Sadie admirably steps up to the responsibility.

This was a time when family members cared for their elders, and I enjoyed that part as well. Sadie took on a difficult job and didn’t grumble. The ending was beautifully done.

Four beautiful stars!

I received a copy of the digital ARC via NetGalley. My review is voluntary.

This is a gorgeous book. ❤️

From page 1, I was transported to a different time and setting, and I completely forgot that I was even reading.

I loved everything about this book. The core mystery was gripping, the suspense & tension were ON the whole time, and I refuse to believe that these characters are not real!

PS: I’m not a big romance fan, but this had one of the most tasteful and beautiful romance subplots.

Also, this book had some of the BEST VIBES and atmosphere I’ve ever encountered. If old, remote mansions, rainy summers, ghosts, family secrets, and a bit of romance and spice is your vibe, you’ll love this one.

I love a book with time travel / time slip elements. This one is well-written and kept me intrigued. So many secrets and scandals. I couldn't care less about the romance part though and I admit I find some of it cringeyy but thank goodness not enough to dnf 😂
This novel is inspired by a few classics like Picture of Dorian Gray, Wuthering Heights, and The House on the Strand. I'm not a big fan of classics but good to know the inspiration behind this novel and I hope I find the willingness to read them someday ☺️

I always enjoy this author's books. While this was not my favorite it was still good. A creepy, gothic, ghost, sensual, type story. One that gave me goosebumps.

While I did not like the main character, Sadie, at all, the story was good. I thought Sadie was too much. First of all she had been having an affair with a married man. The parts where she meets his wife were unbelievable. No woman ever truly wants to meet the other woman. Or one of the many other women as the case may be. Besides this though Sadie just grated on my nerves. She decides to go to Blackberry Grange and stay with her aunt who is suffering from dementia. The first night she's there she is left alone with her aunt. What was up there. Did Aunt Marguerite always stay alone at night. As she suffered from dementia I would not think so. But it's fiction right. Still...

I liked Aunt Marg. She was something else. An artist. And what an artist she was. Her portraits were so lifelike you could almost find yourself inside them. I felt bad for Marg. She seemed to be so lonely until Sadie arrived. Except for the gardner/driver and the nurse there was really no one there. No family. Just her and her paintings. Marg has a lot of secrets though. A whole lot...

You meet Sadie's relatives and oh my what a group. All seem so selfish and self-centered. I didn't like any of them. Not even their awful, spoiled, bratty, kids. Destructive little creatures is what they were. I kind of liked Beckett. He was Marg's gardner/driver and he cooked. Seems he was a great cook.

This story has a lot of ghostly things going on. A lot of sexual tension it seems. I didn't much find parts of that believable either. I mean, a ghost. Really? But again it's fiction. And gothic. And a horror story too. Anything can happen in a fiction story afterall... And boy does it.

I did enjoy this book. It was well written and in places edge of your seat scary. While some characters, most of them, I didn't like there were some I did. Even though parts were unbelievable it was still very good. This author has a way of pulling you into her books and not letting you go until the very end. And what an ending. That part made me cry. It was perfect...

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

After a broken engagement and the crushing loss of her mother, Sadie Halloran is emotionally adrift. In a desperate search for meaning, she moves to Blackberry Grange to care for her great-aunt Marguerite—a once-celebrated artist now in the throes of dementia. What begins as a story of healing and caregiving quickly shifts into something far darker and more surreal.

Marguerite is no ordinary patient. She spends her days feverishly painting portraits—of former lovers both adored and despised—each canvas dripping with a strange, otherworldly energy. These aren't just memories—they’re hauntings. And the spirits born from these paintings begin to seep into the house and Sadie's mind, blurring the line between memory and madness, past and present.

This gothic thriller was beautifully eerie—at times dreamlike, at others deeply unsettling. The supernatural elements were chilling without being overdone, with spirits that felt like metaphors for repressed trauma as much as literal ghosts. At the heart of the story is Sadie, a character I genuinely connected with. Her grief, her resilience, and her vulnerability made the strange happenings at Blackberry Grange all the more compelling.

Amid the dread, there's also unexpected tenderness in the slow-burning romance between Sadie and Beckett, the gruff and grounded groundskeeper. Their connection brought warmth and balance to a story otherwise steeped in shadow and sorrow.

While the mystery kept me guessing, it was really the emotional core—Sadie’s growth and Marguerite’s unraveling legacy—that carried the weight of the novel. If you love haunted houses, generational secrets, and stories where art is both salvation and curse, The Artist of Blackberry Grange will leave a mark.

⭐️ 4/5 – Haunting, lyrical, and quietly devastating.

After a broken engagement and the crushing loss of her mother, Sadie Halloran is emotionally adrift. In a desperate search for meaning, she moves to Blackberry Grange to care for her great-aunt Marguerite, a once celebrated artist now in the throes of dementia. What begins as a story of healing and caregiving quickly shifts into something far darker and more surreal.

Marguerite is no ordinary patient. She spends her days feverishly painting portraits, of former lovers both adored and despised each canvas dripping with a strange, otherworldly energy. These aren't just memories, they’re hauntings. And the spirits born from these paintings begin to seep into the house and Sadie's mind, blurring the line between memory and madness, past and present.

This gothic thriller was beautifully eerie, at times dreamlike, at others deeply unsettling. The supernatural elements were chilling without being overdone, with spirits that felt like metaphors for repressed trauma as much as literal ghosts. At the heart of the story is Sadie, a character I genuinely connected with. Her grief, her resilience, and her vulnerability made the strange happenings at Blackberry Grange all the more compelling.

Amid the dread, there's also unexpected tenderness in the slow-burning romance between Sadie and Beckett, the gruff and grounded groundskeeper. Their connection brought warmth and balance to a story otherwise steeped in shadow and sorrow.

While the mystery kept me guessing, it was really the emotional core, Sadie’s growth and Marguerite’s unraveling legacy—that carried the weight of the novel. If you love haunted houses, generational secrets, and stories where art is both salvation and curse, The Artist of Blackberry Grange will leave a mark.

⭐️ 4/5 – Haunting, lyrical, and quietly devastating.

“‘Sometimes I think I sold my soul for a handful of penny candy— as if some unseen devil heard Florence’s wish and granted it, using my talents as a vehicle for evil.’”


This is not my typical genre— gothic horror—and there were definitely parts that were not my favorite, but it had some redeeming qualities. I liked the second half a lot better than the first half.

I’ve probably only read a few ‘horror’ books so I don’t know what is normal for that type of read. For this book there were supernatural things happening and hauntings, but it wasn’t a super dark or gory story. Because it was set in 1925 the haunting part felt more like an atmospheric element than anything that was supposed to make me feel scared.

I would say it’s more gothic than horror.


The premise: Sadie, on the wrong end of a terminated affair with a married man leaves Kansas City, seizing on the opportunity to care for her great aunt in Arkansas, Marguerite, who is deteriorating with dementia.

“Marguerite was spirited. A chimera. An artist who broke rules and paved her own path in life.”

Family secrets come to light when Sadie experiences the supernatural through her aunt’s haunting portraits she’s painted of people now deceased. Sadie can see them walking in the house and can even be sucked into the paintings— portals to the past.

“‘This old house holds many ghosts, my dear. Some of them are mine.’”

The lure of the paintings centers on Weston Chase, the subject of one of the portraits who is also a womanizer. He seduces Sadie to carry on an intimate relationship through the painting portal.

“Weston Chase. Like something out of a tawdry romance. He’s a hunter, my dear. He chases. You fell right into his snare. But there’s a price to his pleasures. A price you’ll never be able to pay.”

But Sadie soon realizes something happened in Marguerite’s past that reveals these hauntings are part of a curse that must somehow be reversed before the rage of Weston kills them all.

“‘There’s a reason for her anger. Her pain. She just has trouble remembering what caused all of it.’”

“For the past few weeks, so much of what I thought I knew about my family has changed, as if I’ve been looking at them through distorted glass for all these years. Now I see them more clearly. How their well-bred ways were a facade for a well-hidden darkness.”



Okay, so the first half of the book felt largely unpleasant to read. Sadie was not my kind of girl. Carrying on an affair with a married man and then entering into another lustful endeavor with a ghost knowing the dangers surrounding it felt just very immature and selfish. I thought the whole book was just going to be about these supernatural escapades and how it deteriorates Sadie’s perception of reality. And if that’s all it was— and it did feel like it wasn’t really going anywhere— it was going to be a waste of my time.

Once I pushed through that part, we see some character development in Sadie as she recognizes that what she is doing is wrong.

“I’ve realized I’m not really in love with Weston. I’m addicted to him.”

She starts to have feelings for Beckett, the man on grounds who helps care for Marguerite— who is single by the way and not a ghost— and realizes what real love looks like.

So the main conflict becomes Weston’s rage when Sadie stops the relationship. He haunts the house and causes chaos and destruction. Even when they destroy the painting, it shows back up in the house. How can they stop him?

Then we have the portraits of the other people in the past that start showing Sadie Marguerite’s memories. Something terrible happened on a bluff in California and may be the key to reversing the curse if she can figure out what it was.

“‘But there are some things I’ll never tell you, child. I may be losing my mind. But I’ll take some of my secrets to the grave.’”

“The only way you’ll ever be free of him is by discovering the root of the curse. You must confront the wrongs of the past and make atonement— or the one who wronged him must, if they’re still alive.’”



I was glad when what I thought was just going to be a story about lust turned into more of a mystery about what happened in the past and that it was more centered around Marguerite than Sadie. Did she really have dementia? What memories could we trust? How do you kill a ghost?

The tension and conflict in the book built up a lot more and I really liked the ending. I thought it had a good balance of justice and redemption and allowing the grief of loss to linger. It’s not a completely happy ending, but it did resolve in a way that was satisfying.



Sadie’s selfishness turns to authentic love and care for her aunt and Beckett. She bears the burden of a lot of loss in her life, including her brother dying at a young age from illness and finding her father after he committed suicide on the day of her coming out party. Having been unable to save either of them, she feels compelled to do all she can for her aunt.

There is a discussion to be had here in terms of abusive relationships.

“Ted and Weston share many similarities. Passionate. Possessive. Dominant. And perhaps… duplicitous… What Weston offers me is familiar. But familiarity isn’t always good. Familiar can be dangerous.”

I was glad to see this growth in Sadie— not only that she recognized she didn’t want to be a mistress but that she realized she turned around and pursued a similar man, out of comfort of the familiar, which is not always good. Well, also he was a ghost, but you get it.



In the author’s note, Paulette says she was actually setting out to write a book about caregiving since she had some personal experience with it and wanted to highlight the challenges caregivers face and how our loved ones “teach us about living well and dying well in the process.”

But as she was writing, it kind of morphed into something more:

“While this is still a story about caregiving, it’s also one about generational trauma, and how the echoes of our actions filter down to our descendants.”

I thought this was interesting because I’ve recently been listening to Alisa Childer’s podcast series talking about demonic oppression and generational curses so for a generational curse to pop up in a fiction book I was reading was timely.

One of the ways Sadie attempts to combat Weston was to see a fortune teller where she got something to sprinkle in doorways, a charm to wear, and a prayer to recite. These are similar things to what is discussed in the podcast— what is demonic oppression and how do you deal with it?

I don’t usually choose to read books that have supernatural elements because some things depict reality and others dramatize or exaggerate for the story. I don’t want to romanticize, trivialize, or catastrophize the spiritual world.

If you are a Christian reader and you’re not sure what to think of things like this, I would recommend Childers’ podcast as a launching point to thinking more about these kinds of things.


Supernatural world aside, I do think that there is something practical to be said of family legacies and the things we pass down to future generations. Paulette chose to depict this using a curse. I don’t believe in curses, but I do think that how we parent our children is relative to how we were parented and will be relevant to how our children will parent their children. Abuse has been seen to be passed down. How we treat people. Our beliefs. Our way of seeing the world. Our values and priorities. The way we use our time and our money. All of these things influence future generations for good or bad.

And it’s not to say we can’t make mistakes, but what do we do with our mistakes? Do we cover them up or lie about them? Or do we confess and repent and teach people from our own mistakes?

It is right to think about the legacy we might leave for others. Are we leaving them a blessing or a burden?



A couple other random comments:

- I wish we had gotten more information as to what turned the paintings into portals. Was it something in the way Marguerite painted, was there an event that triggered it? Perhaps it would have been too complicated to integrate well into the book, but it’s something that just has to be accepted and I would have preferred a better explanation.

- We never did tie up the comments surrounding the Blaylock family and the death that occurred in the house. Was that just to add to the eerie vibes or was it meant to be some sort of plot point that got forgotten?

- I agree with another reviewer that I’m not sure I really felt the chemistry between Beckett and Sadie. I was not wanting the lustful connection Sadie had with Weston, but I do think there was something missing from Beckett’s character to connect the readers to him and Sadie’s relationship.

- I will also include this quote from the author’s note for readers more savvy than me: “Savvy readers will notice my nods to The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier, all of which helped inspire certain aspects of this story.”

I actually hated Wuthering Heights and am not a big ‘classics’ fan in general so I obviously didn’t pick up on the cues, but maybe you can!

- This book does have a touch of time travel and the idea that we have to be careful changing the past because we don’t know what it will affect in the future. That’s the thing about mistakes and regrets. They still shape who we are and our experiences that lead us to people and discoveries that we otherwise wouldn’t have.

- Based on the author’s content warning printed at the beginning of the book, she attempted to bring a lot of things to bear in this story. Some more so than others. I suppose it makes for book club discussions, but sometimes I think authors can try to shove too many hot button topics into one book. To be honest, though, most of these were so subtle that I didn’t even notice them or feel overwhelmed by them … other than when I read the whole list before starting. Luckily, I forgot about them pretty quickly.



Recommendation

This one is hard to know how to recommend. I’m not a fan of the lust and sexual content, or the first half of the book in general, but I was glad with the turn the book took and some of the themes that eventually shone through.

I think there are both reasons to read it and reasons not to read it. I think I’ve provided enough information for you to know if this is a good fit for you.


[Content Advisory: 0 f- or s-words; there is sexual content, nothing drawn out but a few sex scenes and lust is a main plot point; supernatural elements and a demon/ghost; LGBTQ+- Marguerite had several female lovers]


**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

After a broken engagement and her mother's death in 1925, Sadie Halloran learns that her great-aunt Marguerite, needs a live-in companion. Blackberry Grange is Marguerite’s mansion in Arkansas, where she is compelled to paint eerie, hallucinatory portraits of old lovers. Time seems to shift in the mansion, and Marguerite had secrets. Now, Sadie must uncover the secrets before Marguerite’s memory slips away.

Sadie doesn't have anyone she can truly rely on at the start of the novel; engaged to a married man, she's the pariah in a family set on making good impressions in Kansas City society. She hears of Marguerite and figures it's a place she can go to lick her wounds and regroup, but learns to truly care for her. Marguerite had a scandalous past of her own, secrets she keeps even from herself, and dementia. The house seems haunted, and some of the paintings that Marguerite made have the ability to draw people into them, experiencing the past like a ghost. While Sadie is drawn into this world, it also takes its toll on her and can be potentially deadly.

The author noted that Marguerite is meant to have Lewy Body dementia, a form that comes with hallucinations and behavior changes more often than the Alzheimer's type. Even without knowing that, the picture of what it was like to be a caregiver is very clear. Sadie sees glimpses of the woman beneath the illness and hears stories about what life had been like for them in the Gilded Age. The present Roaring Twenties aren't too much better for Sadie, but she soon realizes that Marguerite is hiding things and blaming her dementia for keeping secrets. The magic with the paintings allows her not only the guilty pleasure of travel and a relationship, but to also see Marguerite and her sisters as they were, which allows her to eventually get to the truth. The secrets kept became something of a generational curse, and it was going to affect Sadie if left unchecked.

I was drawn into the story due to the level of detail and care that was taken in describing Marguerite’s life and ailing memories, as well as Sadie growing up more while in that household. I enjoyed it, and had to keep reading until the book was done.

This one had so much potential for me. I loved the time period, the setting, and the main character. Sadie was an interesting character and I loved that she had lots of flaws. The plot requires a lot of suspension of disbelief (and yes, I say this as a well versed gothic and fantasy reader), however, and it dragged quite a bit for me in the middle. Nevertheless, it was a solid gothic historical read!

I haven’t read a gothic novel in many decades, but I quite enjoyed “The Artist of Blackberry Grange” by Paulette Kennedy. Set in the 1920s, it tells the story of Sadie Hollaran, who has nowhere to go after a broken engagement with a sleazy philanderer. She hits on the idea of staying with her declining great-Aunt Marguerite in her mansion in the Arkansas Ozarks. At first, Sadie is suspicious of her aunt’s handyman, and he is suspicious of her. Both wonder if the other has ulterior motives when it comes to looking after the aunt. And not only that, mysterious things keep happening and Sadie falls under the spell of the handsome man in the painting, who at first is charming, and then dangerous. Only by solving the mysteries of the past, will Sadie and her aunt be completely safe.

Many thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. My opinion is my own.

What a rollercoaster! From beginning to end. This novel is full of longing, anxious moments because you don't know whats happening next, turns and loopholes and most importantly it shows us the capacity that our brains have of hiding the most horrible secrets in order to protect us.

I loved the characters and their development through out the story. The depiction of Aunt Margs desease was so real and so haunting that it gave me chills.

I fell completely in love with this book (so much so, that I read it in 2 sittings) and I'm looking forward for more of this autor.

I never met a Paulette Kennedy book I didn’t love. Always so gothic and atmospheric full of feminist vibes and plots you can’t look away from - they draw you in and mesmerize you with the perfect amount of spooky and supernatural to feel almost real. I read somewhere she is the ‘modern day Daphne du Maurier’ and that description could not be more fitting!⁣
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Feeling a bit like the black sheep of her family, Sadie has no where to live, and no one to love. She leaves Kansas City for an Arkansas mansion - hoping to become a live-in companion to an elderly estranged aunt - and even quite possibly, inherit the home. What she finds is a woman in the throes of dementia who paints all too real portraits of the ghosts of her past. Sadie is determined to find what haunts her dear aunt, but finds she might need to face the actual ghosts, before all who live there lose everything. ⁣
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The Artist of Blackberry Grange is an Amazon First Read this month and definitely deserving because it’s twisty and chilling and so full of secrets that every page will captivate and haunt you in the best of ways.

The Artist of Blackberry Grange was an intriguing Gothic novel

Sadie Halloran is the good time girl in her family, a good time girl who is not really having much of a good time.. After being dumped by her married lover and with her mother dead and buried, Sadie is at loose ends and broke. Her cousin mentions that her Great-Aunt Marguerite needs help at her house, Blackberry Grange, With fond memories of her visits there as a child, Sadie decides that she will be the live in companion that her aunt needs. Sadue however is unaware that her aunt is suffering from dementia and that strange happenings as the Grange will overshadow her time there.

This was a wonderful Gothic story of past lives, current lives and how a little thing can change the trajectory of one’s life for the better.

Thanks to Negalley, Lake Union Publishing and the author for the chance to read and reivew this book.

The Artist of Blackberry Grange
by Paulette Kennedy
Pub Date: May 01 2025

The Artist of Blackberry Grange is a great ghostly story! Great storytelling, great twist and turns with a spectacular finish! What more could you ask for? What I liked most about the this book is the gothic style and dual-timelines.

This is my very first book I've read by this author and I look forward to reading many more of her books! Definitely a 5 STAR read!

Short Synopsis: In the summer of 1925, the winds of change are particularly chilling for a young woman whose life has suddenly become unbalanced. For a young caregiver in the Ozarks, an old house holds haunting memories in a ghostly novel about family secrets, sacrifice, and lost loves.

Many thanks to #TheArtistofBlackberryGrange #NetGalley and #LakeUnionPublishing for providing me with an E-ARC of this fantastic book!

Sadie Halloran, reeling from a broken engagement & devestated by the death of her mother, makes the decision to go live with her great-aunt Marguerite, Marguerite, once a renowned artist, is now in the late stages of dementia, and needs full-time care. Becoming Marguerite's live-in companion and caretaker gives Sadie the purpose her life needs, so she packs up and moves from the Kansas City boardinghouse she was living in for Blackberry Grange. When she arrives, she discovers Marguerite is feverishly compelled to paint eerie, hallucinatory portraits of old lovers—some cherished, some regretted, and some beastly. All of them haunting. With each passing night, time itself seems to shift, and truth & delusions begin to blur, Sadie must uncover the secrets that hold Marguerite captive to her past before reality—and Marguerite’s life—slips away entirely.

This gothic thriller was haunting & eerie. There were evil spirits that haunted both Marguerite and Sadie, spirits that came from the paintings that Marguerite did, but then there was also a love story.....the romance between Sadie and the groundskeeper, Beckett. This book was dark, but I really liked Sadie's character, and she was what made the book for me.

I was super excited to read The Artist of Blackberry Grange since I really enjoyed this author’s previous book, The Devil and Mrs. Davenport. This book was slower paced and took me a bit to get into, and I didn’t really like the main character. Some of her decisions didn’t make sense to me and she kind of got on my nerves. However, I loved the Gothic atmosphere and the 1920s setting. I also loved the supernatural elements in the story. Fans of Gothic historical fiction will probably enjoy this one. I do love Paulette Kennedy’s writing style and I look forward to reading more from her in the future.

3.5⭐️

I must warn you - once you start reading you’ll be swept up in a fast-paced, captivating, dark story, and you won’t want to set it down until you’ve reached the end. Sadie has had her life turned upside down, and although she goes to live with her aunt afterward, it doesn’t entirely break her spirit. I was fascinated by the mystery and ghosts that haunt Aunt Marguerite, and was just as invested as Sadie in unraveling them. Kennedy does a masterful job at bringing both the historical setting and characters to life. You feel like you’re right there, wandering the halls of Blackberry Grange by Sadie’s side, and you’ll get an eerie feeling that the ghosts are standing just over your shoulder as you read. A brilliant story that gave me chills, even in the middle of the heat wave we’ve had.

This was another good book by this author!
I wasn’t too sure I liked Sadie to begin with but she changes as the book goes on. This was a nice gothic mystery with a ghostly vibe to it. It does touch on quite a few issues but all are handled really well. I couldn’t put it down!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I loved The Artist of Blackberry Grange! I've recently started to get more and more into gothic horror and wow, this did not disappoint! It was atmospheric and the drama was messy, which I always love! As I haven't read too many gothic books, I really enjoyed its midwest setting, that was new for me!

A wonderful read!
This novel drew me in from the very first page and kept me hooked until the end. The characters were vibrant and relatable, the writing was engaging, and the story had just the right balance of heart and humor. Highly recommend!
Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.