I really enjoyed this creepy, gothic tale. The setting and style was so atmospheric, and it was easy to get immersed in the mystery.

Anything Laura Purcell writes I will read. This book was so creepy!! I had to keep turning to look out my window to make sure nothing was moving. There is a sense of dread that just sweeps right through the pages until the very end, perfect gothic feeling in the countryside. I can't gush about this book enough. I rarely reread book, but this book I will be rereading in the fall. Ultimate ghost story, and seriously silent horror.

Elsie Bainbridge is a newly wed when she learns that her husband, Rupert—who had gone to the family mansion his family had owned for generations, to repair and condition it for the arrival of his beloved—has died under mysterious circumstances. Overnight, Elsie inherits a dilapidated mansion in the country where none of the villagers want to work at, and the company of her late husband’s spinster cousin.

The Bridge, the estate Elsie has just come into, is as neglected inside as it is on the outside. In one of her exploratory trips inside, Elsie finds a locked door, one that proves impervious to any attempt to open it. She makes arrangements with the headmistress to send for a locksmith but, before anyone can be sent for, the door is found open, revealing a treasure trove of odd artifacts inside, among them, a two-hundred-year-old journal from Elsie’s late husband’s ancestor, and strange figures—half painted, half statues—that have as purpose to serve as silent companions to the inhabitants of the house. Elsie’s cousin-in-law is quite taken with a couple of wooden companions and asks a servant to take them out before leaving the room. Soon, the whole house is full of them... and they seem to have ulterior motives.

The Silent Companions is a splendid, beautifully written gothic novel, with images that rightly convey the atmosphere of isolation, helplessness and danger, with three parallel storylines: one set in the village of Fayford, England, where The Bridge is located, in 1635; one in 1865-1866, with events unfolding at a match factory in London, and also at The Bridge; and events set, approximately, in 1867, in an insane asylum. I found that both contemporary timelines were less repetitive and more compelling than the ancient one—at least until things took a turn for the worst in 1635—, because most characters, especially Elsie and Sarah, her cousin-in-law, were very compelling characters that projected the terror they were experiencing into the narrative, and thus to the reader.

Right at the introduction of the novel, the publisher warns that this book shouldn’t be read at night, but I think it is precisely at night, or after dusk, amidst the most deafening silence, that this story works best. I read the novel at several times during the day and found it wanting, but it was especially atmospheric during the conditions I mentioned above.

The Silent Companions has a sense of menace, an undercurrent of potential unreliability that gives depth and edge to this novel unlike anything I have encountered before in my reading. It helps that most characters have secrets and reasons for keeping their guards up at all times; those secrets are slowly revealed to great effect. Add to those elements a neglected mansion with an enigmatic headmistress, wounds that don’t heal, mysterious messages in the dust of a nursery that may or may not be tidy, wooden companions that may or may not move... It’s a spook fest.

Disclaimer: I received from the publisher a free e-galley of this book via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. I also bought my own copy.

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell is a 2018 Penguin Books publication.

The best Gothic Horror novel I’ve read in a long time!

Elsie, recently widowed, and pregnant with her first child arrives in a remote village, with her husband’s cousin, Sarah, to live in an old home, owned by her husband, referred to as ‘The Bridge’, which has not been lived in for quite some time. Due to her husband’s wealth, and his sudden death so soon after their marriage, rumors and scandal are breathing down Elsie’s neck, but the villagers and her limited staff are also quite superstitious about her, and the house.

While exploring the house, which is full of locked rooms, Elsie finds some old diaries, as well a ‘Silent companion’ – which is a painted wooden figure that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie.

The staff is terrified of the 'companions', but Elsie is determined to learn of their origins. As it happens, diary entries written by Anne Bainbridge back in the 1600s, provides Elsie with plenty of shocking family secrets-

The story is told in three alternating segments-

Elsie, badly burned in a fire, is under the care of a doctor who is attempting to discover her culpability in that fire and her level of sanity. As the doctor slowly draws the story from Elsie we are taken back to her arrival at ‘The Bridge’, as she explains her experiences leading up to the deadly fire. We are also transported back to the 1600’s via Anne’s diaries, where we learn Anne may have dabbled in a little witchcraft to conceive a child- a decision she may come to regret.

Wow! I let this book sit on my TBR list longer than I had intended. For some reason when I picked it up I was under the impression this was a historical mystery of some kind. I was totally taken off guard by the chilly ambience, the overwhelming Gothic tones, and the rip-roaring, spine tingling ghost story!! To say I was pleased is an understatement!

This is one of those stories that makes a good fireside read on a cold, dark winter night. It’s very well constructed, multi-layered, written in a lush, almost beautiful prose. I haven’t read a recently published novel of Gothic horror this good in…. I couldn’t tell you when.

This is what Gothic horror should look like- and feel like. The atmosphere was thick and heavy with impending doom, the suspense was taut, keeping me on edge and practically glued to the pages. I’d never heard of a ‘Silent Companion’ until I read this book. The history behind them is interesting, but in this case, they creeped me out big time.

This is a perfect, shivery, chiller with an OUTSTANDING conclusion that will blow your socks off!

Yep, this one goes on the favorites list, for sure!!

5 stars

A different kind of creepy. I really enjoyed the slow build to action with solid character development. Will be recommending to everyone who wants an unusual creepy story.

A novel set in Victorian England about a haunted house. The story is told in three layers. First, we have an insane asylum in the late 1860s, where an unnamed woman with no memories is accused of being a murderer. Second, in 1865, Elsie Bainbridge is newly married, newly widowed, and newly pregnant. She is sent to her late husband's country estate for her period of mourning and confinement, and soon finds it to be an unsettling, mysterious place. Finally, in 1635 in the same country estate, Anne Bainbridge is wonderfully happy with her up-and-coming husband and healthy children. The only problem is that her use of herbal medicines has started rumors that she's a witch. The silent companions of the title emerge in several of these layers: a bit like life-size cardboard cutouts, but made of wood and paint and distressingly realistic, they appear to move by themselves throughout the house and exude feelings of hate and terror.

Quite the creepy set-up! Alas, the writing simply didn't work for me. There's nothing specifically wrong with it, but I didn't feel drawn into the book. I never emotionally engaged with any of the characters, and the historical setting didn't feel well-researched. It was all just a bit shallow and unpolished. I'm not sure the three-layer structure worked, either; the insane asylum frame-story in particular never added anything to the whole.

It's not a bad modern take on gothic horror, and I do have to admit that I absolutely loved the eventual resolution of why the house was haunted, but overall the plot needed a writer with a defter hand.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2568233699

Full of tension and the kind of narrative unreliability that leaves you uncertain of anything, I still wasn't entirely enamored of this novel. I liked the multiple layers of historical fiction (Victorian flashing back to the reign of Charles I) and while the two periods were mostly drawn very well I did think there were a few incidents where the characters had unrealistically modern attitudes. And that's what really bothered me - because I can defend the characters' prejudices and leaps of logic if they're historically accurate, but they really need to be historically accurate throughout, not just when they're being offensive, and then they can be modern to sympathize with the point of view character. Horror novels aren't usually a font of sensitive representation, but I'd want to slap on some content warnings for unexamined racism and ableism on this one in particular.

This book wasn’t for me. Instead of posting a negative review, it is my policy not to review the book on my site or label it as DNF (did not finish) on Goodreads/Amazon.

Brought to you by OBS Reviewer Daniele

The Silent Companions, with its Gothic crumbling estate, shadowy Victorian setting, and seriously creepy wooden figures, will entrance readers looking for a sinister read that will keep you reading with the lights on.

The story actually alternates between two time periods at the family estate, The Bridge. We meet Elsie as she arrives at her new husband’s ancestral estate for his funeral. It is unclear from the beginning what led to Rupert’s demise, and Elsie is met by disagreeable staff and untrusting locals. Her only companion is Rupert’s cousin Sarah, who Elsie initially finds almost unbearably dull. They do grow close, however, after they discover a strange wooden figure, a Dutch silent companion, in the garret of the sprawling home. Unexplained things begin to happen and the figures multiply, threatening all who live at the Bridge. Alternately, the novel tells the story of Rupert’s seventeenth century ancestors who brought the silent companions into the home and sparked the village’s thinking that the estate housed a witch. Things progress in both timelines, coming to a quietly gut wrenching and chilling conclusion for Elsie.

My first impression of Elsie is that she is a snob, but readers soon learn about her tragic upbringing. And the passages that take place in the “present” with Elsie in a mental hospital are heart wrenching and, at times, disturbing. I confess to not knowing what was real or imagined at many points throughout the tale, and I think this is the author’s intention. Some things are just unexplainable without believing in the paranormal. The story moves along at a steady pace, the urgency to find out what happens next prodding me to read well past my bedtime…with the lights on. Even though we learn quite a bit about Elsie, I do wish there was more back story for Rupert and more about Elsie’s brother Jolyon (there is an interesting inference about Elsie and Jolyon towards the end of the book that changes everything).

The Silent Companions will creep you out and stay with you long after the last word is read.

This book was more suspenseful and scRy than the books that I normally read but I did enjoy it a lot. The plot moved along quickly and was well thought out!

Author Laura Purcell presents us with a convoluted tale of a woman who, newly bereft of her husband, takes her husband's cousin with her to his country home, to give birth to her deceased husband's baby. Along the way some wooden cut out dolls come along and freak out the household, possibly causing death and destruction.
The Silent Companions flip-flops between this event, and a future place in time, in which the main character is in a mental asylum, having flashbacks, and a third time period, farther in the past, in which another set of characters mistreat a special needs child during their preparation to receive the king and raise their fortunes. There is a lot going on in this story, and there are no real lines of demarcations between past, present, and future. They just jumble together. I often found myself having to flip back a few pages in order to pick up the thread. While this story is partly from the perspective of a madwoman and thus some confusion is understandable, a more linear storyline would have fixed many of the issues that I had with The Silent Companions.
Gothic horror stories, when done well are amazing and such fun, but this was not one of those tales. It had the potential to be a great story with more editing. I think that this tale was presented to us before the final draft, and it is unfortunate, because the premise is really interesting. If convoluted gothic horror (not really) stories are your cup of tea, by all means, read this book. If you don't care for flipping back and forth, trying to find the correct thread of the story, then skip The Silent Companions.
I offer my thanks to Netgalley, for the opportunity to read this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting gothic mystery book that from the beginning made me slow my reading down and read with an attention to detail. With two storylines featured, with the same character at the center. In one storyline Elsie is a young pregnant widow and is moving into her deceased husband's home and is going to try to put the pieces back together. In the other main storyline, Elsie is older and a fire has just happened and she is in a mental hospital and can't figure out what happened. There are other chapters that at the beginning confused me completely, but these are from a Bainbridge relative from the distant past.

Let me start by saying I was completely confused for this first portion of this book and it took me two tries to get into it and to really understand what the heck was going on. It was the other viewpoint that really threw me off because after my first try I read a few reviews and couldn't place where this was coming from. In the end I loved its inclusion, but it had me pondering for the beginning. I kind of wish the author had waited and introduced that storyline after the reader is familiar with the other two Elsie storylines a little better.

I don't read a lot of historical fiction mystery/thrillers, so this was both in and out of my familiar reading. It was interesting to combine the elements of a historical fiction with a creepy mystery thriller addition. It was extra because the timing of the story was so far back so the element of mystery was specific to that time and just felt different from what I normally read and I both liked it and had a hard time getting into it.

If you read a lot of Victorian fiction whether it is mystery/thriller or just fiction, you would probably like this more than I did. If you read mystery/thriller and you feel like each one is feeling the same and the same, this could be something that is out of left field that you could enjoy.

I was hoping for a spooky, twisty Gothic thriller and that's exactly what I got. Creeping, menacing supernatural happenings stalk Elsie and the terror builds steadily until the shattering climax and the final, horrifying ending. This is in no way a feel-good book, but it is a fabulous read for chilly winter nights or Halloween.

The story alternates between three different time periods: Elsie after the climax, Elsie leading up to the climax (both in the 1800s), and an older series of events set in the 1600s that provide insight into the supernatural happenings Elsie battles against. All three sections were gripping and the slow unraveling of information was well spun across these sections.

A part of me does wish everything had been explained a little more. In the broad strokes, the story is immersive, gripping, and satisfying. If I start to think more deeply on events, however, I come away with questions and some events that are only tenuously explained. But, really, that doesn't matter and didn't impact my enjoyment at all. I don't mind a little unexplained happenings in supernatural stories, and that does seem to be par for the course in Gothic novels to an extent.

Bottom line

Highly enjoyable. I am looking forward to reading more from Laura Purcell.

This one definitely kept me guessing and I enjoyed the evolution of the different characters. I also liked the subplot with the diary. After a while, though, the "companions" seemed to lose their scary-ness. Overall enjoyable though.

Purcell uses many of the hallmarks of the Gothic genre to lay the foundation for her creepy novel. The main character Elsie is a young woman, out of place in an ancestral home that isn’t hers. The townspeople and staff are suspicious. There is a locked attic room. There are found journals and hints of witchcraft. What’s new here — the companions themselves — is actually very old.

In the 1600s Holland, lifelike, painted wooden figures were created as part of a movement called Illusionism. These figures could depict adult, children, royalty, locals or even animals. It’s not entirely known what their original purpose was, though some research suggests they were used as fire screens and to prank people. Purcell turns these inanimate figures into terrifying mannequins with a menacing presence.

Told through Elsie, the main protagonist, the reader hears her voice both as she tries to settle in at The Bridge and later as she attempts to explain herself to an asylum psychiatrist. The two worlds eventually crash together, and leave an unnerving suggestion in the air.

‘Madness, as we call it, manifests itself in many ways. People do not always wait and shriek as you say your mother did. But it does seem to run in families, I have observed, particularly through the female line. Hysteria — womb to womb. Diseased blood will out. There is not hiding from it, I am afraid.’

Slowly she let the slate and chalk drop from her hands. She could feel the past stealing up on her, the way a river inches up its banks in the rain; gradually lapping at her chin, filling her mouth. Pg. 130.

The question of sanity — is Elsie really seeing what she thinks she is seeing? — is a rather expected, and realistic, one. The more interesting theme of sound versus silence is used to great effect. These “silent companions” are anything but. While they do not speak, their intentions are unmistakable. They make horrible scratching and groaning sounds as they move about the house.

Had she really heard that? The senses could play tricks in the dark. but then it came again. Hiss.

She did not want to deal with another problem tonight. Surely if she kept wrapped up with her eyes shut, the noise would go away? Hiss, hiss. A rhythmic, abrasive sound. Hiss hiss, hiss hiss. What was it? … Hiss, hiss. She started up, every inch of her electrified. Hiss. Teeth against wood. Scraping. Pg. 38.

These unsilent companions are pitted against the character of Hetta, a young girl who lived in the house two hundred years before, introduced through old journals found by Elsie in the attic. Hetta was the daughter of the wealthy owners of The Bridge but she was not quite the same as her family. She didn’t speak. Hetta becomes a fierce and frightening force to be reckoned with in her parts of the story. Her silence is in direct opposition to the tongues that gossip about her and her family, and the prattling characters that Elsie is now surrounded by.

Published in the UK last year, I had heard multiple reviews say it would keep the reader up at night, that it was so scary you could only read it in the daytime. I did not find this to be the case. While some scenes are certainly unsettling and it is very atmospheric, this is not a scary horror novel. It is instead a mysterious, Gothic story that unwinds slowly through diaries, memories, and theories. There are no ghouls jumping off the page. The fear lies in the unknown and for the (un)reliability of sanity.

I love a good gothic story and this one check all the boxes. Old house, family secrets and a touch of paranormal. Will indefinably be recommending this one!

I love a good gothic thriller! My first experience with this genre was reading Wilke Collins' The Moonstone. That led me to Henry James, Shirley Jackson, and Hitchcock. Now I can add Laura Purcell! This story was chilling. It's the kind of book I like to curl up with on a dark October night.

The writing is excellent, not cheesy. She did a good job of building the suspense and not giving away too much too soon. I really hope we see more of this type of thing from her in the future!

I don't typically read "scary" books with supernatural elements, but I really enjoyed The Silent Companions. It's the perfect length: long enough to develop the characters and story, but short enough that I never found myself wanting to rush through parts of it. It was creepy, with a nice twist at the end, and I'd definitely recommend this book.

A completely creeptastic tale that had me jumping at the slightest sounds - warning: read with all the lights on!

This a dual timeline tale, alternating between the 1800’s and 1600’s, all based around a gothic castle in England with a long, tragic history. As the story unfolds, you learn more about what has occurred to put the haunted in the house.

This is a great, spooky tale, one you’ll absolutely have to suspend disbelief, but oh how great it is once you do! It does get a little gruesome at some points which was a little outside of my comfort zone, but then again, I’m a big wimp so there’s that.

Definitely recommend to historical fiction fans who are in the mood for a good scare.

Thank you to Netgalley, Laura Purcell and Penguin Books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars rounded up.

** spoiler alert **
I don’t know what was or wasn’t real. Was it all just the imaginings of an insane woman? Were those diaries from Rupert's mother real? Was Sarah playing a cruel joke on Elsie at the end? Was Helen really the daughter of Rupert's father? This is why reading books with a twist of sanity drives me batty. All the residents (real or make believe) came back, at the end, as companions. Only two people died; the brother and housekeeper, but Elsie believes all 9 residents of the house perished. This book wasn't so much as scary as it was creepy good.