2.5 stars--somewhere between "liked" and "OK."

This is a really fast read--perhaps too fast, since things were rushed and details were omitted. The romance is instant and intense, which isn't really my usual style. However, the narrative voice was clear, strong, and confident--I really enjoyed the main character.

I received this review copy from the publisher on NetGalley. Thanks for the opportunity to read and review; I appreciate it!

You have to give it to the author, she writes in gothic prose like she was of the century. The use of the prose and gothic mystique aided in creating a mysterious cloud around the storyline which for the most part was great. Sometimes I felt like the author did wax on a little too much but it didn’t ever feel like she got off topic for too long.

The storyline on and of itself was good, creepy, mysterious, and has a little bit of horror moments thrown in.

The novel itself is set during the pandemic. This can be a trigger for some.

I received a copy from netgalley for review.

Hold My Place was a book that fell short of its creepy potential. I expected it to be twisty, and it was to an extent, but it still left me feeling dissatisfied.

Sigrun is a librarian who becomes totally besotted with a sophisticated chef, Edgar Leyward. She signs up for cooking classes at his restaurant. Edgar too, it appears, reciprocates her feelings, and treats her with greater attention, but does not initiate any physical intimacy. He makes it clear that he is a married man and that he is deeply in love with Octavia, his wife.

When Octavia dies of Covid, Sigrun is anxious to comfort Edgar and make sure that he doesn’t give in to his grief. She moves into his life and his home. They get married just six weeks later.

One day, Sigrun, looking through his study, discovers the shrine he has made to all his loves. She comes to know that Octavia was not his first wife, nor the first loved one he has lost. Before Octavia, he was married to Brigitte, who died of breast cancer, and before that, he was engaged to Devlin, who died of a fall while they were on a trek. All three women had untimely and early deaths.

Edgar shares the letters that all three women had written to him. Sigrun begins to read Octavia’s letters, then Brigitte’s and lastly, Devlin’s, hoping to better understand Edgar. While the handwriting naturally differs, Sigrun comes to know of some disturbing similarities between the letters.

While the similarity of thoughts and ideas evokes a mild sense of alarm, Sigrun finds her own personality strangely altering, drifting away into that of another woman. The tug is almost hypnotic. Until some words in Devlin’s letter wake her up to the harsh truth. And if one day our spell seems to have lost its power, I’ll find another door to the room where you are. Nothing, certainly not anything so common and crass as death, will ever divide us.



The book is written mostly in the first person past tense of Sigrun. While the first person PoV allows us to get to know a character intimately, the author spent too long acquainting Sigrun with the three women in Edgar’s life. Too much time was spent on the build-up of the letters.

The story had the potential to be really creepy but none of it came through. The promise of the blurb came about after far too long, and was left mostly unexplored.



The near-constant rain and the vague sense of menace created a sense of impending gloom. Just when it feels like something that might be better suited to a time in the past, the author roots the book in today’s times by telling us that The horror story of our age had already begun… A new sickness ravaging the east. But with our typical blithe American arrogance… we assumed it would never reach us. There is a lengthy bit about Covid that spells too-much-information about something we know all too well, and loosened the grip on the story somewhat. I suppose the author was trying to juxtapose the tumult in her own life against the tumult and confusion that the coronavirus brought in its wake.

While the commentary about Covid was written in beautiful prose, the author should have “killed” her darlings, since the horror of Covid detracted from the horror of the story.



It is clear that there is something forbidding about Edgar. His love for the women in his life is all-encompassing, yet it somehow seems unreal. The affair feels, to Sigrun, inexorable, darker than blood, swifter than thought, colder than a corpse.

Edgar is described as handsome and elegant, and Sigrun is totally enamoured, but the man was still uninteresting to me.

Did I like Sigrun? No. There just wasn’t enough to like. Heavily tattooed and goth in her choice of clothing and makeup, Sigrun is a mass of contradictions and far from the image of the stereotypical mousy librarian.

She tells us that she loves to read paranormal romances. We never actually see her reading them. She should have been fleshed out better. Nor did I like Edgar or the other women. None of them were real. The only person I liked, and not too much at that, was Evan. But he didn’t occupy too much space in the book.





I found it odd that other than Octavia, none of the characters were endowed with surnames. It made the characters feel unsubstantial. Edgar’s surname, Leyward, is actually Octavia’s. Of course, we couldn’t be sure about it. In Chapters 1, 3, 4 and 5, there were a total of six references to the name, Leyward. In Chapter 9, the name changed to Leyman.

The restaurant where Edgar is a chef, serving French-Asian cuisine, is called La Table in ten places, and then La Place in three places.

There were other errors. One character says, “We all metamorphosize, don’t we?” That word should have been metamorphose. One of Evan’s five texts to Sigrun sounds as if it were written by her.



The pace was too slow. We spend a lot of time reading the letters written by the three women, and I got the feeling that the author deliberately drowned us in those letters, while not letting us know enough about what was happening between Sigrun and Edgar.

As late as the 82 percent mark, things were still okay for Sigrun. The sense of alarm had not become clear, and she wasn’t in any physical danger yet. The only danger was that she was caught up in the myth of Edgar, and was willing to lose herself to be his love for ever.

The first sign of real fear shows up only at the 86 percent mark. At the 91 percent mark, we see the first traces of what the blurb had warned us about, but it’s neither scary nor impressive. The book takes far too long to deliver on its promise, and when it does, it’s wrapped up so swiftly that we don’t know what hit us. Sure, there’s a twist, a weird one, one that I didn’t expect after the Prologue, but there’s no time to process it at all.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4161370220Thanks to Netgalley for this book!

This one was a little weird, but in a good way. I had the feeling throughout there just wasn't something quite right about Sigrun's love. I won't go into details as clearly that's a spoiler. I just had a feeling early on. It was so fast, nearly flawless and a massive lot of life milestone steps with seemingly little to no drama. Then boom. All the drama in the last few chapters. I couldn't figure out if the novel was leaning towards realism or something more paranormal and the story line and main character give nothing away in this respect either till the conclusion. I'm just not sure how I felt about it. Slightly cheated maybe? Maybe the twist was too twisty? Maybe I'm just boring!

However, the book was written very eloquently and you can tell the author has a love for words and prose. A poet, at times it made me question my own intelligence and education levels wondering if people so actually write letters like this! I don't have the flare for elegancy so look on in wonder with a touch of confusion.

Overall 3.5 or 3.75 stars as I just didn't love the ending.

:)

TheWeeBookLady. X

Hold My Place by Cassondra Windwalker—what can I say—It’s a 5. Very gothicy, very not normal. I thought I knew where we were going and I was sort of right but not quite and that makes all the difference. I loved this dark and twisted tale. It left me unsettled and that’s what we like in a horror story, isn’t it? I found the pace just about right—a bit slow in spots, yes, but that only made me more anxious to see how events would unfold. I found it suspenseful enough to keep me reading and the payoff was worth it. I did connect with the main character—and I tried to talk her down, but did she listen? No. She just merrily went on her way with no regard to the excellent advice I muttered into my Kindle in the wee hours of the morning. We also like that.
I highly recommend Hold My Place to anyone who needs a jolt of disquiet to keep you awake and worried about what’s out there—watching--plotting.

I went in with high expectations because of the prologue and it kind of disappointed me.

It was slow paced in some parts, not as gripping as I would've liked it to be and I couldn't really connect to the characters.

What I did like was the writing style, the darkness, the madness and the plot twist although it didn't really make much sense to me and was kind of rushed.

I read this book on my kindle and it only gave me the location and not page numbers so I am not actually sure how long this book is but to give it credit I finished it in two days, and I am typically a very slow reader. It held my attention and I wanted to know more. I am a big horror/ scary movie fan and without giving too much away, about halfway through I had a very strong feeling this book was a take on The Skeleton Key and Get Out. I wanted to know more and it held my attention but possibly only because I wanted to know if my assumption was correct or not. The one thing I am still not over is in the begining of the book Sigruns heart breaks because Edgars index finger is covered in gold, or something along those lines, I had to google to see if I was crazy, but I am not, the index finger is ineed your pointer finger and your ring finger is the one that would be covered in gold if you are married. I thought the vocabulary throughout the book was a little extravagant but maybe I'm just a simpleton. At times I thought the writing was a little hard to follow, I couldn't tell what was going on or who was talking. I'm not sure if that was intentional to add to the madness of the story or if it actually was just hard to follow.

I love Cassondra Windwalker's writing - will definitely be looking to read more from her if they are as good as Hold My PLlace

I don't know what I was expecting this book to be, but it was definitely not that!
There was this really great dark mystery/thriller atmospheric throughout that I really liked.
I didn't like how it started with the main character saying something like "I'm not like most women" and it just gave a bad vibe to the whole beginning.
I would like the pacing to be a little bit faster at times but otherwise I really enjoyed this book.
Overall the book was good. Not my kind of book but I can see how other people would love this.

I really wanted to enjoy this book but unfortunately it did not work for me. It was not gripping enough and was very slow at parts. I was a little disappointed overall.

This was very quick and easy to read. Filled with flowery (but not over the top) prose, and a gothic atmosphere. Set in the present time during a pandemic.

I enjoyed the the atmosphere the most. There were parts that I wanted more of, and parts where it could have been less. The ending was one that could have benefited from being longer. I wanted more of that uncertainty in the middle as well.

Overall it was very enjoyable. The cover is pretty too.

I’m not sure what I think of this book.

It began strong with Sigrun, a librarian, falling for Edgar, a handsome but married man. It’s a mix of a thriller and romance with gothic tones.

However, the book seemed to be uneven to me. It should have been longer to flesh out the plot and character development. I felt as though we were told the ending but didn’t get build-up for it.

I just love a good twisty mystery/thriller. I really enjoyed this one. It was a domestic type thriller and gave me Rebecca/Janye Eyre vibes. It was gothic and I liked how the story was tied to magic/fantasy elements. I recommend this book to everyone who loves thrillers with fantastic elements.

My first Windwalker, but definitely not my last. I honestly didn't know what to expect with this book. Thriller? Romance? IDK, I didn't read the synopsis all of the way through. And I'm SO glad I didn't! The prose is engrossing. The story is intelligent. The twists got to me. I'm so happy I was able to read this!

well written and not too heavy on detail. A novel idea as the main concept but I found the book a little slow and it didn't have me gripped. It held my interest enough that I wanted to get to the end to see how it concluded and it was an interesting twist.

Insidious suspense and notes of Mehphisto Waltz - you know something is wrong, but what exactly is it? Kind of figured it out before the end, but not exactly. A definite must read if you like a slow burn that grabs you and doesn't let go.

I throughly enjoyed this short book. The writing was beautiful. The idea of falling in love so quickly is dreamy for many ... a little unreal, but we have all tried it. Ha.

I was surprised at the outcome. Pleasantly surprised.