My Five Word TL:DR Review: Absolutely Brilliant. That is All

I practically inhaled this book, it was so good. I started, and for a moment there, I almost thought maybe this one is going to be the book that doesn’t wow me, but no, a hot minute later I was drawn in and it pretty much knocked my socks off.

I’ve read quite a few of this author’s books now and they seem to go from strength to strength. A Haunting in the Arctic scared the heebies right out of me – they still haven’t returned tbh. I haven’t got over that book. Shocking, dark, scary and absolutely compelling. To be fair I think that is still my absolute favourite although The Last Witch was also really good – and now The House of Cursed Daughters. I adored this book and I’m about 99.9% certain this will be on my favourites list come the end of the year.

Anyway. Review.

I don’t usually cut and paste the book blurb description but in this case the three separate paragraphs outlining the three central characters of the story are spot on, so here they are:

France, 1312. Queen Isabella is a new mother. Her baby boy secures not only her ill-starred marriage but her own precarious future. And yet, she is terrified. A generational curse hangs over her family. Can she free herself and her child from it?

London, 1865. The corridors of Bedlam Lunatic Asylum move like white serpents around Lois. The women here are all the same—more mad than when they entered its doors. But if sin is the cause of her illness, and her memories are the manifestations of insanity, then who is the little boy who calls her Mama?

Brittany, 2026. Artist Emma is preparing for her wedding in the French countryside, where she and her fiancé have rented a beautiful old castle for the occasion. She hopes the event will help her connect with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Ivy, who has never understood the demons that drive her mother’s life and fuel her art. But soon the echoes of her past threaten to derail not only the wedding but everything she holds dear.

This basically gives you an outline of our three MCs. Although Ivy (Emma’s daughter) also has some of her own page time.

What I loved about this.

The story is addictive. I love a story that is told with dual timelines so imagine my glee discovering that we have three timelines here. And they’re all so good and so different. Isabella’s story is really intriguing, to such an extent that I started googling to find out more about her, even whilst still reading. Then we have Emma and her wedding and art exhibition preparations. As a rule I’m not usually a lover of the more contemporary threads but actually this thread is really interesting. Emma has painted what she believes are 13 women, fictional, from different periods, all wearing the same dress, brought together by her painting of Queen Isabella and concluding with her own self portrait. This feeds into the story very well. And of course we have Lois, an inmate of Bedlam with no memory of how or why she ended up in an asylum. Such a hideous place, positively inhumane.

These three lives intertwine more than you will expect and all this becomes clear as the story progresses.

The writing is really good and the pacing is spot on. There are moments of reflection, we have back stories for the three main characters but on top of that there’s always something taking place. And lets not forget the curse, that terrible bloody curse that has followed Isabel and all her descendants. On top of this there’s a feeling of urgency. Everything is hotting up, something is wrong.

And yet these elements, as good as they are, are not the best part of this story. The absolute winning element of this story is the way Cooke writes the female characters. She is so good at bringing these females to life, painting their struggles, the unfairness that they face and then giving them the strength and courage to see things through. And the stories make you so furious. The inequality these women face, the way their lives are manipulated and abused, But they stand up to be counted and they stand together.

In conclusion, you may be able to guess, but I loved this book and I can’t wait to see what this author comes up with next. If you like split timelines, strong females, excellent writing and curses that become intense and scary then look no further.

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

My rating 5 of 5 stars