Title: The Bone Flower
Author: Charles Lambert
Genre: Historical Fiction/Ghost Story
Publisher: Gallic Books
Publication Date: 22nd September 2022
Rating: 5/5
Cover:
Summary:
On a November evening in Victorian London, the moneyed but listless Edward Monteith stokes the fire at his local gentlemen’s club, listening to stories of supernatural experiences and theories of life after death. His curiosity leads him to a séance, where he falls under the spell of a beautiful flower seller. But Victorian society does not look kindly on love between a gentleman of means and a Romani girl, and when he faces being cut off by his family, Edward makes a decision with horrifying consequences.
Two years later Edward is married and anticipating the birth of his first child, in a beautiful house lined with orange blossom trees. But the wrongs of the past are not so easily forgotten, and the boundary between the living and the dead begins to thin… A deliciously chilling Gothic novel, The Bone Flower is a deeply human story about guilt, betrayal and the cruelty of social expectations.
Review:
Anyone looking for the perfect read to kick off spooky season can call off the search because this is it! The Bone Flower is a deliciously chilling and unnerving gothic ghost story set in Victorian London. The atmosphere drips off the page and leeches into the brain of the reader slowly but surely. It is also beautifully written, evoking the time period so strongly that it honestly feels as though it were written in the 19th century. I would describe it as a sort of Oscar Wilde meets Edgar Allan Poe, which is basically my ideal book! The Bone Flower completely delivers on the fear front – it creates an ambience of subtle dread and I was anxiously looking over my shoulder whilst reading. However it is also full of a kind of delicate sadness which makes it an intensely moving read. Haunting, heartbreaking and unsettling – I couldn’t recommend The Bone Flower more highly.
✶✶✶✶✶
I very kindly received a copy of the book from the publisher. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.
Buy the book:
Life With All The Books 