First of all thank you Netgalley for approving me to read this ARC of The Curse Of The Cole Women in exchange for an honest review.

This book immediately drew me in with the premise; told from the perspective of three generations of women from their respective time periods- 1950’s, 1970’s & 1990’s. We follow each of the women as they live their life on a small island trapped in a supposed “curse”.

For generations it has seemed that the Cole women are doomed for a life of loneliness in their role to keep the lighthouse beam lit. There’s only ever 2 Cole women at one time in the lighthouse, and always their end is the sea that they spend their life preserving.

I absolutely loved this book, it was unlike anything I’ve ever read and I fell in love with the stories of each of the women (particularly Mabel) and how different they were. My heart broke for all three of them and the way that their lives were dictated by everyone else. It’s a beautifully tragic story that intertwines 3 women’s life and how they dealt with growing up “cursed”.

I loved the different eras it was set in and the description of the island that made me picture it so well, it was very well written. My only issue with the book is fairly solvable and it’s that there were many grammatical mistakes, very basic things that just need another round of editing. I was able to take note of about 9 different circumstances of these errors so I’m unsure if the book is still awaiting a last round of editing, but as it’s not being published until December this year I don’t see this as a major issue.

The ending made me surprisingly emotional, I felt very attached to all the characters and even though we’re told about what their fates must be from the beginning it was still emotional to read after getting to know them.

I would highly recommend this book and I think December is a great month for publication and will fit perfectly with the vibes of the book. I hope everyone gets a chance to read it and I’m looking forward to seeing other’s thoughts.

Content Warnings:
Graphic: Suicide
Moderate: Addiction, Bullying, Death, Drug abuse, Physical abuse, Death of parent

This is one of those rare books that helps you find beauty in your own wounds, alongside the entire cast of characters. The different timelines and perspectives were masterfully woven together and there was no point at which I didn't trust Thompson to see me fully through the story no matter the cost to me and the cost to the characters. And as someone who grew up in a small coastal community as well, although not an island, I definitely felt a home here - for better or worse. If you know, you know.

unfortunately this wasn't for me. The writing style was pretty plain (not what I expected from the marketing as an "atmospheric, gothic read"), I found the main characters unlikeable and the plot kinda pointless? You could have cut out the first 200 pages and turn it into a mystery where the third woman discovers stuff about her ancestors' lives but instead all the reveals in the end we already knew about and the "queerness" is barely worth mentioning (aside from the fact that it felt tacked-on and then everyone just ended up with a man or sad or dead). So sad to say this was a disappointment for me.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

This book ripped my soul out and fed it back to me, I swear. I’m not a crier; I rarely cry while reading books, but my God, this book wrecked me.

The characters are very well fleshed out, and the writing is absolutely beautiful. Mabel, Rebecca, and Simone had such tragic stories. I think this book handled the topic of suicide really well, especially considering that it’s set in the 20th century.

Unfortunately, not everything was perfect with this book. The time we spent with each character was not equal. We spent a lot of time with Mabel, a bit with Rebecca, and sped through with Simone. I wish we had spent more time with all of them and learned more about their lives.

The prologue didn't immediately draw me in, and I worried at first that this book wasn't going to be for me. But happily, it turned out I was very wrong. I ended up crying my eyes out at several points throughout the story, and for that I'm going to drop 5 starts.

The atmosphere is amazing. The sea, a lonely lighthouse, an insular island community, and all this quickly won me over.

Then there are the titular characters -- the women, supposedly the descendants of witches, cursed so there can never be more than two Cole women on the island at a time, and there must always be at least one. They're not supposed to leave.

How "real" the curse is becomes a matter of interpretation. The book was sold to me as fantasy, but it's debatable whether anything supernatural occurs that cannot be put down to the imaginations of the characters. I would hesitate to call the book fantasy. Magical realism fits better, or psychological fiction. But the women are definitely cursed, just not by a magic spell or anything more witchy than the ill-will of men, and the prejudice and judgement of people around them. The curse can perhaps be seen as a metaphor for a mental health condition.

The structure of the novel is interesting. We follow three generations. Mabel in the 1950s, Rebecca in the 1970s, and Simone in the 1990s. They are of course never all three alive at the same time, because there can only be 2 Cole women on the island at a time. They die young. What's interesting is that the narrative jumps in time from Simone to Mabel to Rebecca and chronologically it's not linear. While this may initially confuse some readers, I think it worked really well once my head got used to it.

The book is packed with great and expertly handled themes of generational trauma, marginalization, mental health, suicide, forbidden love, powerful men getting away with stuff, emotional manipulation, ostracization, abuse and neglect. Rarely have I seen such heavy themes expressed in such a powerful way. I cried my eyes out, and I would heartily recommend The Curse of the Cole Women to anyone who likes sobbing hysterically.

It started very promising! I loved the first line and was very intrigued. But while the story went on, it lost it's hold on me, and the ending was rather weak.

The generations of Cole women are cursed to live on the island (never more than two alive at the same time) with a group of very conservative people who believe Cole women are witches. They have no actual reason, but they do, and they hate them. They hate them even more, because they need them: there is another curse that promises ruin to the islanders if there are no Cole women in the lighthouse.

Very interesting premise! We get three timelines for three women, three sets of mothers and daughters who make the same mistakes and end up in the same situation. Don't get me wrong, the first half was really nice and the book is well written, but the prologue has nothing to do with the rest of the book in my opinion.

✨I still urge you to read it if you want a story of suffering, loneliness and willingness to stay imprisoned, because you listen to the call of duty, feel sorry for the people who hate you, and believe you are somehow to be blamed for your ancestors' mistakes.✨

This gothic tale of magic, generational trauma, and the weight of legacy had all the ingredients to be a haunting favorite—but unfortunately, it didn’t quite deliver for me.

I was drawn in by the premise: three generations of cursed women guarding a lighthouse, tethered to both the sea and their supposed fate. But instead of experiencing their pain and struggle through vivid, present-day storytelling, much of the trauma is filtered through memory and exposition. As a result, I felt distanced from the characters and emotionally uninvested in their journeys. At times, I found myself wondering why they didn’t simply leave—or at least consider it more seriously.

The pacing also felt uneven. Some scenes dragged without adding much depth, while others—particularly Rebecca’s time off the island—were rushed through when they deserved more attention. And while I recognize that this was an advance reader copy, the grammatical issues were hard to overlook. Awkward phrasing and the repeated use of “that that” and “had had” often pulled me out of the story and made the prose feel clunky.

That said, the concept is rich with potential, and I appreciated the themes of legacy, obligation, and queer love woven throughout. With some tightening, polishing, and deeper emotional grounding, this could be a powerful and evocative read. But as it stands, it fell short of what it could have been.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this novel. All thoughts are my own.

Thank you NetGalley for this advanced reader copy. Unfortunately I started this book and did not finish. Too slow of a start for me, writing was beautiful abd the themes were everything. Just maybe not for me specifically.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

I appreciate the intention of this book, and I do have to commend the author on the successful management of multiple points of view. It is always a difficult thing to successful contain multiple characters, especially when they are from the same family and have shared traits. I was left really impressed by the balance created by the author for all of the characters. I didn’t feel like any of them were neglected, which was fantastic.

However, I do think that I maybe expected something a bit different from this book as whole. I probably enjoyed Mabel’s point of view the most, and I found her to be the most developed of the Cole women. I do think that there wasn’t quite as much from the town as I may have expected. There are allusions to the conduct of the rest of the town, but it always cut off just before we found out more about how they were treated.

I suppose as well that there was a lot more I would have hoped for from the relationship side of things, less physical and more emotional. The ending was strong and quite cosy, however, and as a whole, I think that there’s a lovely little story here, even if it misses some beats.

Slow and contemplative story about three generations of women shunned by other people because of “curse”. It was said that no more then two Cole women can be alive and it seems that the book reflects it in a way that it only focuses on two at a time: first half is dedicated to Mabel and her daughter Rebecca and the second half to Rebecca and her daughter Simone. That is where the book shines, the generational trauma and misunderstanding between the women. While the ending felt rather explanatory - needlessly repeating thing readers already knew and spelling out everything that was already hinted at, it didn’t sour the experience. Maybe in parts the story was a bit too slow, but overall the descriptions were good and the moments when the women decided to drown themselves were haunting.
3,5 stars - rounding up to 4.

What a haunting, dark and beautiful story about learning to overcome and thrive through generational trauma.

The Cole women have had the anger of men and those who judge them looming over them for generations. The way that the stories build with each shows how it adds up over time.

The setting was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. The ocean calling to the women both with love and anger.

This was a wonderful read from start to finish!
If you like gothic seaside historical fiction this is for you

The Curse of the Cole Women follows three generations of the Cole family who are cursed (or are they?) to stay on Juniper Island and man the lighthouse.

This is a beautifully written story that explores the complexity of loneliness, relationships, identity, and family. I absolutely loved following the three storylines and the way that they weaved together at times and then grew apart, I found it very reflective of the natural ebb and flow of familial relationships. The way in which Marielle Thompson writes made me deeply care for each of the women and feel emotions alongside them. I was rooting for them each step of the way.

The only slight let down for me is that I didn’t fully understand the curse - given that it is the catalyst for everything that happened in the book, I would have loved to have understood fully the effect that the islanders believed it to have on their daily life. It didn’t quite add up to me so maybe I needed a little more explanation why the islanders reacted to them in such a way.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books/Alcove Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

One of the comp titles being Practical Magic rang very true for this book, as The Curse of the Cole Women follows Mabel, Rebecca, and Simone - three generations of Cole women living as outcasts from their small island community, after a long-distant ancestor was accused of witchcraft and a curse placed upon the family. The story follows the lives of these three women, as they struggle with what it means to be confined by fate.

It took me a little while to warm up to the plot - it strikes me more literary than what I would typically reach for, and I think had I gone in with the lens I would have taken to the story much sooner. It took me until about the 50% mark to fully engage with the plot, but it was a quick read from then on in!

I also found I enjoyed Mabel and Simone's stories far more than I enjoyed Rebecca's. Rebecca's naiveity in her earlier scenes made her harder to empathise with as a reader, and the brevity of her story in later life didn't give her as much of a chance to change this initial impression.

Overall, my main takeaway from this book was the exploration of what it means to find community, and the impacts of being without community. The haunting sense of isolation was woven through each of the women's stories, underscored by the lighthouse setting and pervasive chill of the atmosphere created by Thompson, which really highlighted the moments of warmth and compassion within the narrative. Incredibly well done!

**Review currently live on Storygraph. Will be posted to Tiktok within the week.

This book was an interesting read to branch the 3 different women and the curse they felt following them. I would not call it romance more women's fiction. I really enjoyed it and it would be great for a book club as it will allow you to have many different conversations, especially one about hate and the power it can have, but also how one person's kindness can make such a big impact.

Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books/Alcove Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. The Curse of the Cole Women was a really interesting read for me. It's a story that is told through three perspectives of three women of different time periods. We focus on Mabel, Rebecca, and Simone, three generations of Cole women who are bound to live on the island of Juniper by a decades-old curse on their family. The curse states that only two Cole women can be alive at one time, and each Cole woman will birth a daughter, then eventually give herself back to the sea. They tend the lighthouse and remain on Juniper to keep the spirits of their ancestors in the sea calm, with superstition suggesting that if there was no Cole on the island, the ghosts would be angry. Despite providing this service, the townspeople of Juniper hate the Coles and treat them with distrust and suspicion, their isolation and abuse causing trauma for the women throughout their lives in various ways.

I loved a lot of what this book did and the ideas that it engaged wtih, particularly with regard to the themes connected to mental health and the way it talks about things like addiction, parentification, generational trauma, misogyny, and the fraught nature of mother-daughter relationships. The way we saw the relationships between Mabel, Rebecca, and Simone evolve and Simone's understanding of her family deepen was special, and a lot of the emotions the characters experience are beautifully described by Marielle Thompson. I wasn't familiar with her before but will be looking into her other work after reading this.

For me, as is usually my experience with multi-perspective stories, I was far more interested in Mabel and her storyline than the other two for the majority of the book. Rebecca's chapters in particular were slow to me in the beginning and middle of the book. Without spoiling anything, I struggled to believe that she was so naive with regard to Cal when she had to grow up at such a young age due to the way that people treated her. I also just didn't feel the spark in her romance the way that Mabel's romantic storyline seemed to come alive on the page. In general, Rebecca's characterization felt a little shallow, Mabel and Simone are given more depth and color. Evelyn and Mabel were the heart of the book, pretty clearly, and the narrative shines the most when it is focused on their relationship.

I did like reading this book and I found certain parts of it to be very emotional, I teared up near the end, but there was just something missing for me that never fully drew me in. Still, know that this is a heavy book and it may be hard to read depending on your sensitivity to discussion of topics like suicide and family trauma. The book also makes clear that it has a feminist lens, which I appreciate, but sometimes it did feel a bit heavy-handed or like it was trying too hard to say something about feminism rather than just telling me a story and allowing the subtext and the action to emphasize the message and meaning. I would say overall that this was definitely worth reading and I found a lot to love about it, but it also left me wanting more.

A curse? 'Witches' who live in a lighthouse? Multi-generational? Empowerment of women? Sign. Me. Up.

I saw someone else note that this is is quite bittersweet and that really resonated with me. We have to power through all the struggles, abuse, and trauma before seeing the sunshine after the storm.

It tapped into my emotions incredibly - maybe too well as I wanted to hurl my Kindle multiple times. I felt their fear, their love, their understanding, their friendships.

The switching of POV was executed brilliantly and I found the writing really engaging. The descriptions pulled me to this little island off of New Hampshire in a way I never would've imagined. I could almost taste the sea air.

The intended publication date is December and I think that's a great choice! Spooky atmosphere to match the bleak winter weather (at least that's the case in England).

Note to the editor/publisher: there were a few mistakes in the spelling of 'Rebecca' doted through :)

This had me hooked by the second page, a Cole family curse, witches and just gave Practical Magic vibes.
I loved the generation stories of the Cole women, each different and heartbreaking and all with such a sad ending,

Simone was a fabulous character but my favourite was Mabel, I loved this book and will be picking up a copy for my growing book collection. Beautifully written and want to see what else Marielle Thompson has written and will write in the future.

Thank you NetGalley for receiving an early eARC.

Wow. There are few people that can make an insular island community more sinister than witches and curses. I really enjoyed this book, it was such a refreshing plot and, whilst I usually hate jumping between timelines and perspectives in books, I actually felt that this flowed seamlessly in this case.

The mother-daughter relationships are fleshed out in a beautifully tragic way, you almost want to grab the characters by the shoulders and shake them to remind them how loved they are, despite not being able to see or show it.

The romantic relationships however I felt fell a bit flat in comparison. They didn’t feel fully developed enough for the stakes to feel high, and as a result I often found myself not caring for them as much as I wanted to- especially as I was going into this for the romance! That being said did I still feel heartbroken for these women, who had been betrayed and ostracised for centuries? Of course I did. Did I want to line the people of Juniper up and make them take a long walk off a small pier? Naturally.

A great read, that whilst left me wanting a bit more, still was thoroughly enjoyable. Thanks NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC!!

The first thing I thought when reading The Curse of the Cole Women, is that the backstory was very similar to Practical Magic (1998). I'm not sure if this was intentional, but the book  description does say "perfect for fans of Spells for Forgetting and Practical Magic".

Basically, an ancestor was thought to be a witch. When she died, the town's people took her body, her daughter and her granddaughter to a remote island. To the suprise of future colonists of the island, the two women survived and were believed to be cursed. The curse means there is only ever two Cole women and no husband.

The main difference here, is that in Practical Magic the ancestor was pregnant and exiled. Also, the curse was on any man that loved an Owen's woman, whereas the curse is on the women themselves.

I wasn't sure I would like it but I did.

It starts with the modern day Cole woman, Simone, finding out about her mothers death. Then it it is her grandmothers view, Mabel, until she has her daughter then Veronica's view is switched in.

I really loved the way it was written and getting to see the cycle of the Cole women.
I had me hooked the whole way through, plenty of drama to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Plus the characters were relateable.

The Curse of the Cole Women was a very heavy read. You definitely need to check your triggers before diving into this one. With that being said, it felt like a lot of the story lacked substance. And the FF relationship left something to be desired. I've said this before in previous reviews, but it's very disheartening when queer relationships aren't explored to their full potential in books. I am not part of the LGBTQ community, but it seems that leaving the queer relationships less developed than the hetero relationships is more damaging than not having a queer relationship in the book to begin with. I think this needs to be explored here.