Another dark tale from Catherine Cavendish where the past and present overlap to create a living nightmare. In this, her most surreal work, an evil spirit from a long-demolished workhouse seeks to inhabit women so it may live again. Definitely not for the squeamish, and definitely not for anyone headed to a hospital in the near future. A large number of plot threads all tie together nicely at the finish. Great character development.

https://druidcat.wordpress.com/2020/10/28/in-darkness-shadows-breathe-by-catherine-cavendish/

NetGalley kindly provided a review copy of this book, but my opinions are my own.

Spooky hospitals seem to be their own trend in recent horror. From ‘The Ward‘ to ‘American Horror Story: Asylum‘, we’ve seen so many protagonists fight their way free of institutions that are supposed to be helping them. Perhaps timely in this crazy year?

This book takes the best of such tropes and combines them into a modern gothic tale that gripped me immediately with its spooky atmosphere, despite being set in a very mundane world – at least at first.

We initially follow Carol, a down-to-earth supermarket worker who’s flat-sitting in a posh apartment complex. But it’s adjacent to a hospital that was refurbished from a building with a much darker purpose… and soon this very 21st-century lady is being drawn back in time.

About halfway through, the action jumps to Nessa, a patient in the hospital undergoing a pretty intense operation. From the easy familiarity of Carol’s life, we suddenly find ourselves with a woman going through a traumatic fight with cancer. It’s a bit of a jarring leap, but we quickly find out what they have in common – besides strange dreams (memories?) of a filthy secret corridor echoing with screams.

I don’t want to give any more away, but a thread of uncertainty runs through the book as to whether our protagonists are hallucinating due to medication, going actually mad, or somehow really experiencing supernatural horrors that are tied up with the hospital’s history.

I enjoyed the start of this book. A brief prologue reminded me of Dennis Wheatley somewhat, before settling down into ultra-normality. Once we relate to the character, strange things start to happen, making it easy to ask what we would do in her situation. So far, so good.

The writing is beautiful and an absolute pleasure to read, with the transition from modern renal ward to Victorian squalor (or reality to Otherworld) being almost tangible.

However, the leap from one character to another is sudden and, for me, rather awkward. Nessa’s cancer treatments are focused on quite closely, and that’s a very different type of horror. When we see Carol again, I was left wondering what happened during the time we weren’t with her – because something certainly had.

The book demands a bit of work on the reader’s part, I think, to keep up with what’s going on in several deliberately confusing scenarios. Hospital staff don’t seem to act rationally, and the dreamlike quality of the ghostly scenes draws you along. It all seems to be heading for some sort of dramatic crescendo, as you think the characters have broken free to safety…

And then the book stops.

I don’t think this is a cliff-hanger, but it was shocking in the worst way. Nothing was resolved, I was left wondering what would happen next, and the commitment to both Carol and Nessa’s battles seemed wasted. It’s almost as if the author wanted a ‘Seven’-like twist, but couldn’t quite manage it.

I did enjoy the majority of this book, but it left me wanting more. I found myself making up ‘head-canon’ for the characters, because I genuinely did like them and I wanted more than the author gives. The final part of the novel appears to have vanished.

Do check this out if you like a bit of modern gothic on a dark winter night. Personally though, it left me feeling that the protagonists had checked out of the story early, as well as the hospital.

Available to pre-order on Amazon, for release mid-January 2021.

I received an e-book ARC of In Darkness, Shadows Breathe, authored by Catherine Cavendish, from NetGalley and the publisher Flame Tree Press in return for honest review, which follows below. I thank both for this opportunity.

I rated this novel 3 stars.

There was much about this that felt timeless, including the author’s voice. I set the main time period much older in my mind, then had to adjust quite guiltily when a cell phone is used in chapter two. Without a year to ground me, I was swept up with the expressive language, imagining the entirety of the novel taking place in centuries past. I think it helped with the feeling of upheaval when there were actual jumps in time for the characters, for the reader’s POV.

Hospitals harboring darker pasts; built from sanitariums that barely attempted basic patient care, while physicians experimented on the vulnerable and involuntarily committed: Gothic dreams are made of these, who am I to disagree? I worked at a hospital that was a few years shy of reaching its centennial year, and let me tell ya, that place had a presence. Places like that, they creep, they grow in strange ways. It can start with an extra floor, an under street tunnel connecting out patient surgery to the main building that runs several blocks but never lights properly, but the more that is built, the more lost you can feel traveling the halls. I worked with that hospital system for ten years, I didn’t realize how many odd things, supernatural even, were common place at that location until we moved to a newly built, clean slate complex a few years later. I felt such unexpected nostalgia.

Every reader experiences a book their own way, for me most of this novel was enjoyable, creepy in some places; but there were a few things that I wish were different. The first half of the novel seemed short of information for the protagonists, while the second half had people popping up left and right to add tidbits to the growing facts collected by our heroine. I also thought there was a character introduced that would have worked better in the story by either being more present or reduced to no interaction. It felt incomplete. That being said, obviously I am only one reader, other readers not required or expected to feel the same.

So, where to begin with this novel - it’s a bit of a twisted tale with some spooky shenanigans happening in the present which encroach on the past. This is a novel in 2 halves, told from 2 perspectives with, for me, the first half bein the better to me. Imagine a ghost story, with the protagonist alone and disbelieved, seeing and hearing things - enough so that it put me on edge! The second half, not as much but certainly a lot more plot/world building - an ending that I didn’t see coming as well. All in all a good ghost story - recommended for a Halloween read.

this was a great horror novel, I enjoy the way Ms. Cavendish writes. The characters were great and it felt like I was reading an old fashioned horror novel.

Catherine Cavendish never fails to write a tale that will keep you enthralled. This ghost storyline no different.
Excellent read

Twitter can be a cesspool, but I'm so grateful to have found the horror community. I've found some amazing authors because of insightful, passionate reviewers who love the genre as much as I do, and I'm adding Catherine Cavendish to my list of must-reads.

Carol is on contract to house-sit for six months when things in the flat become weird. She hears voices, items seemingly move on their own, and she begins having moments where she loses chunks of time, envisioning an ominous hospital from the Victorian Era. This can't be real, she tells herself, until a series of events makes her question everything she knows about time and reality.

Simultaneously, Vanessa is in the hospital recovering from a brutal cancer treatment when she, too, begins hearing threatening voices, seeing Victorian women and the old Waverly hospital where deranged doctors did horrible things to the female patients.

They are connected, and before the ghosts of the past alter the barriers of time, they have to figure out how and why.

I really enjoyed this book.

There were some truly creepy moments here made more disturbing by Cavendish's excellent command of imagery and storytelling. I love a good asylum narrative. Old hospitals have so much potential to be terrifying in their tales, and Cavendish's spin on it was well executed and thrilling. My favorite parts were the moments just before the scare reveal, where the characters sense a presence but don't know yet what is happening. I found myself holding my breath, too, eager to see what was coming but also super wary of what horrible thing would pop up next.

I also found it refreshing to see the narrative focus around a cancer patient. Approaching illnesses in a meaningful way can be difficult. It's a sensitive subject for many people. There's apprehension about acknowledging when people are sick for any number of reasons. Cavendish even addresses this as her characters discuss the function of humor. I want more of these honest conversations: the real side of treatment and what it entails for the patient and their loved ones. Cavendish gives us Vanessa, a strong, determined woman who has no certainty about her future but isn't drawn in a sympathetic, this-is-all-I-am light. She's not just a cancer patient. She is a woman battling for her life, her (maybe) past lives, and dealing with her recovery.

Overall, In Darkness, Shadows Breathe is an eerie supernatural tale about possession, persecution, and perseverance. Highly entertaining and thoroughly riveting, I'd recommend to anyone who's not afraid of a few malevolent spirits and, perhaps, doesn't mean sleeping with the lights on.

Big thanks to Flame Tree and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for honest review consideration.