With beautiful writing and clever construction—using correspondence and journal entries, as well as narrative prose—author Michelle Paver weaves the mystery of a infamous murder with the story of a strong-willed girl oppressed by both her father and cultural expectations. Despite actions which under different circumstances could easily be considered questionable, the protagonist, Maud, feels relatable; she could have been an anti-hero in a different context, but in her setting and story, I found myself pulling for her without compunction.

Wakenhyrst has the feel of a gothic classic. Through setting and tone, the tension starts building from the first page and draws you in with the ebb and flow of a perfect pace. When reading, I was lost in the story, but in hindsight, I admire Paver’s craft. The stories within stories, the atmosphere—the darkness, but with highlights of warmth—it is the novel equivalent of an intriguing painting, with ever more to draw you in. It was a joy to read, a sincere page-turner.

Though I was provided an advanced copy for review, these are (as always!) my honest thoughts. I thank publisher Head of Zeus, Michelle Paver, and NetGalley for providing me the opportunity to read and review Wakenhyrst.

I first heard of her when my daughter was working her way through the 'Wolf Brother' series of books, and decided to read 'Dark Matter' before giving it her prior to her visiting Svalbard. It was a complex read which kept me up and left me emotionally drained in places!

I was therefore exited to read this book, which hasn't disappointed! It is very dark and atmospheric in it's writing, and created a sense of confusion in my perception when reading it in a way that Neil Gaiman sometimes does.

I loved this book. It is billed as a Gothic novel, and it certainly has elements of the Gothic in it, but it also had the feel of "Without Charity", Michelle Paver's first novel which was partly set in the Fens, and concerns an unconventional young woman.

Maud Stearnes, the central character in the novel, is not an attractive individual. She is very bright, but poorly educated, and constantly belittled by her father, who died in Broadmoor. If he isn't mad, he is certainly extremely disturbed.

The fact that none of the characters are attractive or likeable is completely irrelevant, by the end of the book I was reading faster and faster as I wanted to find out who did what to whom, and also (slightly) to find out if Maud achieved some kind of closure.

Highly recommended.

This is Maud's story and in 1967, at the age of 70, she has finally agreed to tell it. Her mother died when she was 12 after which she lived with her distant, academic father and her two younger brothers in a large house on the Suffolk Fens. Michelle Paver has researched the location and the time well to offer us a tale of virtual suffocation in a household dominated by a father who has very strict rules as to how girls and servants should behave. The story concerns the mysteries of Maud's father's past and his descent into madness alongside Maud herself finding freedom and expression on the Fens. I was gripped by the story and found all the characters very well constructed, helped by local dialogue and descriptions of customs and superstitions of the time and place. I recommend this novel to readers who enjoy well crafted and researched historical fiction.

This is my second Michelle Paver book and I received this as an ARC copy from net galley but I think i read a different book to the one everyone else is reviewing. I found the whole thing stolid, there was a lack of action / narrative and evocation. It could have been set anywhere for me there was little of the fens in it and far too much about chatterpies. I really could not get into any rhythm reading it and neither did I or horror at all. I think me and this author are about done as the last book I read left me feeling disappointed too

I have read Michelle Paver's previous books, darkly Gothic historical ghost stories set in unexpected places. Wakenhyrst is different, but is as well written and structured as her other work. It is set in a large manor house in the early twentieth century, and follows the story of Maud, the young girl who lives there. Her father, Edmund, is a domineering and severe man. Following the death of her mother, Maud finds herself more isolated than ever, trapped in a house full of rules, surrounded by the bleak, wild fens.

As Maud grows up, she becomes fascinated by the unruly nature that surrounds her home, and explores it in secret rebellion. Her father's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic as he grows obsessed by historical painting known as a 'doom' uncovered in their local church. As Edmund descends into madness and the Fen seems to encroach ever further on the house, Maud finds herself and those she cares about at risk.

With Paver's skill for creating a sinister atmosphere in full effect, this is a great read for any fans of her previous work.

Maud Stearne is a typical example of a Victorian middle-class girl, when convention, superstition and religious dogma were as tight-laceing as women’s corsets. Her father is a cold and distant scholar of medieval mystics, her mother the ethereal, fragile wife, who finally succumbs to her n-th stillbirth and miscarriage. The Fens, just across a footbridge from their house, are beautifully portrayed as a place that is threatening, lying-in-waiting, full of foul odours and miasmas - sometimes even invading the house itself. But is that all that’s invading and what’s that clickety-click sound at night? Can a painting come alive? If you like a brooding, creepy gothic tale, you’ll like this.

Set in the Fens, Wakenhyrst is a dark gothic tale of superstition and witchcraft. Maud is a child of the time, duty bound to a domineering father and kept safe by a loving mother.

Regrettably her mother dies during childbirth and almost guaranteed risk during the Edwardian era and poor Maud is left unprepared for the world, but knows more than her father believes.

This was a time when boys were educated, but intelligent girls were thought unfeminine and an un-marriageable burden.

Maud's Father’s work sends him into a psychotic depression after having discovered a hidden painting of Hell, taken from their local church.

Maud is a sad young woman and all she loves is taken from her in such brutality it really touches your heart. The setting of the dark Fens lends such a feeling of dread to me and Maud’s fathers decent into madness is so compellingly written.......a marvellous piece of story writing.

I would like to thank the Author/the Publishers/NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book for free in exchange for a fair and honest review

A ghost story set in rural Suffolk and the lonely,quiet fens - what else do you need?

This book took me some time to 'get into', and I was really looking forward to it with the author's recent reputation for chilling, creepy writings. Thank goodness it was well written and conveyed the East Anglian county really well, but in the end I was not convinced with Maud (the main character), and thus did not enjoy it.

This was such a treat! Gothic suspense, the creepy fens, insanity...everything I could have wished for. Maud was a fantastic character, idiosyncratic, feisty, intelligent battling against the history and the superstitions of Wakenhyrst and her father. Her deep love of the fens, of Chatterpie, of Clem made her such a sympathetic character and pulled at my heart strings.

It's been a while since I visited this genre of book but as soon as I started reading I slipped back into my comfort zone easily and the words really did start reading themselves to me as I got fully immersed in the time and setting.
We first hear of the most heinous crime committed by Edmund Stearn and his subsequent incarceration in an asylum. It appears that there are others whose interest in piqued in the crime and the myth that surrounds the whys and wherefores. Especially the part played by Stearn's daughter Maud. We then delve into the past and, through Maud's eyes, assisted by her reading of her father's diary, start to get a better picture of the time leading up to that fateful day; the day that Stearn finally cracked. We see that there is much more than appeared on face value. How the discovery of the Doom impacted on his life. A life that was already obsessed with witchcraft and daemons. All coming together in this spooky Gothic tale which meanders through past and present, throwing up shocking revelation at very turn.
I do love a book that I can actually "see". I am not a very visual reader but here, the wonderful descriptions of the Fens had me actually watching the action as it played out in my head whilst I was reading. It's almost to be considered a character in its own right, so integral it was to the tale being told. This seeing also made the book even darker for me than usual with this genre. At times it was downright scary and I am glad I read it during the daylight hours!
The story itself was intriguing and kept my attention throughout as I was desperate to find out what happened. Well, OK, we know what happens, I really mean the whys and wherefores and the absolute, as it turns out shocking, truth of it all. Especially with the explanation of why Maud's life post-incident turned out as it did.
All in all, a crackingly good read that gripped me throughout and left me satisfied at the end. I'm off to check out the author's back catalogue for more of the same. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

From the start I found this book really intriguing, it is not something I would usually choose but I found the whole concept of the book really gripping and wanted to get through to find out the answers to some of the mysteries which it refers to. I found it very atmospheric and the descriptions of the setting of the book in the fens of Suffolk were very engaging. I was also watching The Haunting of Hill House on TV at the same time as reading this and the two witch and ghost themed things complimented each other! It was a book that got into my head and I would be thinking about it when I wasn’t reading it and looking forward to the time I could sit down and read more.

Stylistically, this is something of a departure from Paver's previous adult horror fiction - more Gothic, more lurid, less reserved. For the most part I think this experiment is a success. There are some very arresting images and passages (eels are fundamentally horrific!), and if the book's thematic ambitions sometimes threaten to overbalance it then there's at least a surfeit of interesting, vivid material from medieval conceptions of hell to psychoanalytic ideas of madness to musings on women's freedom and subjectivity.. As ever with Paver, she wears her considerable research lightly and produces detailed, sensitive descriptions of the natural world that ground the more garish elements. Recommended for strong-ish constitutions!

1966. The late Edmund Stearne,a gentleman and a murderer,creates a bit of a stir in the modern art world with his triptych that he painted while being a guest at Broadmoor,a high security psychiatric hospital. Because,yes, Edmund was a murderer. Right?
1906. Maude lives with her family in Wake's End,a rather grim, isolated manor surrounded by marshes and fens. Her father, Edmund Stearne,a egocentric, inspired historian with a predilection for medieval history has more than a tight grip on his household and after the death of her mother life becomes just a bit more unsettling for 15 year old Maude. She discovers her father's diary and so secretly follows his musings and thoughts. When Edmund discovers the Doom,a painting that represent the Last Day of Judgement,in the churchyard things start to break down for him. Present and past demons haunt Edmund and very slowly he becomes a more than tormented and haunted man. The outcome is both tragic and horrific...
This is both a gothic story,a crime story and the story of the downfall of a human being. The bleak and haunting fens are a perfect background for this very atmospheric and mesmerizing story.

I am a fan already of Michelle Paver, I love her atmospheric ghost stories set in isolated wildernesses. I was wondering how this story would pan out and whether there'd be as much magic as in her previous books with perhaps more mysterious settings and spectral happenings. I was not disappointed one bit.

The Fens here are utterly alive with their wild and untamed nature, the stark beauty of them, the moonlit reeds and the eels. I adored Maud, and was completely behind her from the opening of the novel where we hear of the strange and unexplored murder that occurred in the house. This is delightfully gothic, I fell into the storytelling which was both tinged with terror and full of the warmth that I felt for her character.

I would highly recommend!

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Firstly thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my ARC of this book. Having read Pavers other work, I was very much looking forward to this one.

As with Pavers other work the location is a character in itself. The Fens are perfectly described and she evokes the terrible and dangerous yet beautiful and bewitching atmosphere of this place.

I found the main character of Maud impressive in how she finds her strength in adversity. The demeaning and belittling lives of Female Edwardian women is realised across the various classes and roles they had. The patriarchy and all their contradictory beliefs and menacing manipulation is also shared across the classes.

My problem is how the book has been presented. The real horror is in how women are abused in these times. It felt more like a good Edwardian story of madness and manipulation as opposed to a ‘gothic ghost story’ Although there are elements of a haunting and the various POVs bring this along. It just didn’t have enough fast paced horror, or perhaps the frightening elements where too far apart.

All in all a well written dark and atmospheric story by a great author, just not what I was hoping for. Perhaps it was just too long and would have packed a better punch in a shorter story like Pavers other works.

A mystery, a ghost story, a thriller, religion, history and more.
This book has so much to give and its themes are plenty.
It is a story of mystery and intrigue.
It was an easy read and very enjoyable.
The story tells the life of a girl and her father (whom is plagued by demons).

I know Michelle Paver’s name from the excellent children’s series based in the stone age. My son loved them. However, I have not previously read any of her adult books.

It is just after the turn of the twentieth century and we are in the fenland of rural Norfolk. Maud Stern is growing up in a remote house – not just geographically but also as far as human attention is concerned. Her Mother is frequently mysteriously unwell and her Father, Edmund Stearn, is very victorian in his attitudes to his children – particularly Maud. Maud is a troubled child and grows into a strange adult. Edmund Stearn is obsessively fixated on the life of a fifteenth century woman – witch or saint?

I very much enjoyed the opening chapters of this book. I found it fascinating. Poor Maud is very troubled and no one explains things to her. Consequently she comes up with her own explanations based around local superstitions. She grows into a strange woman who was difficult to like. Prickly and eccentric are words which spring to mind. The character of her father, Edmund, is also interesting but difficult to like. His attitude to women is extreme even for this period in history and he really is a tyrant. The cast also includes various servants, a Doctor, a minister, the minister’s spinster daughter and assorted strange characters. To be honest this is a cast of people who were very much of their time and not very palatable in today’s society. Had poor Maud been shown a modicum of positive interest during her childhood she would have been an altogether different person.

I felt the book stalled about half way through and seemed to mark time for a while. There is a lot of atmosphere particularly in relation to the fens, their smell and the damp. This plays a significant role in the demise into madness of Edmund but I found that it got rather repetitive and tedious. The book, however, did pick up again in the last quarter and took on more of a pace. It was worth ploughing through this stagnant section. The ending was interesting and I am not sure that it answered all my questions. However, I am sure that the author intended it that way.

I enjoyed this book despite it being a book of quite perpetual gloom and unpleasant characters. The writing was good and the plot flowed reasonably well with the exception of the middle section. The description was excellent – I could see, breathe and smell the fens though I didn’t need this stressed quite so often. I would certainly be interested in reading more books by this author.

I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.

Riveting psychological horror, building a sense of creeping dread. The queasiness of the early part of the novel deepens into a study of religious madness with a satisfyingly feminist ending.

A multi-layered Gothic mystery told with verve and style

Grips you from the first page. Atmospheric with a real sense of time and place. Full of local characters vividly portrayed, with local dialect, old customs and herbal cures.

The plot centres around a vicious murder committed in 1913 by Edmund Stearne, patriarch of Wake's End, a huge old house in the village of Wakenhyrst on the edge of the fens. Did he really do it? Why did he later become famous as the mad artist of three doom-laden pictures full of medieval devils? The answer lies in a twisted tale of superstition, a mystic, medieval religion and madness.

The characters and setting are classic Victorian Gothic, though the story is set mainly in the early 20th century. Stearne is a cold man, caring more for his research than his family. Maud's beloved Maman is the wife he married for money, worn down by constant pregnancies. Maud is their repressed and inquisitive daughter who falls for the gardener. Then there are the villagers with their country lore. St Guthlaf's church is also important, its dark secret's revelation integral to the plot. This could be a stilted story, full of cardboard characters but in Paver's hands it really comes alive. The characters are interesting and believable, the folklore and contemporary medical practice well-researched with elements of the story based on true events.

The main focus is Maud. She is a young girl when most of the action takes place but is also seen as an old woman in the 1960s, selling her story to save her home. This split time-frame highlights the strong contrast between repression of women in Edwardian times and Women's Lib of the 1960s, when a journalist writes a defamatory article about Stearne's crime.

Maud's childhood is an unhappy one. As a child we see her trying vainly to please her selfish, domineering father but as she starts to grow up, smouldering resentment replaces any wish to placate him. Her mother, weighed down by an unhappy marriage, loves Maud but is unable to protect her. Her father is researching an ancient manuscript by Alice Pyett, a mystic visionary, something that he thinks will make his name. He is oblivious to the fact that a much more important subject, the story of The Doom, lies within their medieval churchyard, a place he grows to dread. He also keeps a very private notebook!

The story develops at a fast pace, making you want to read on, though some of the medieval mysticism was a bit tortuous, which is why I gave it four starts rather than five. For fans of The Essex Serpent or anyone who enjoys a good historical mystery. An enthralling read.