The House of Whispers by Laura Purcell
Laura Purcell's previous novel The Poison Thread was my top read of 2019, so I had high hopes for this next novel. And while it was good, and full of what I've come to think of as Purcell's trademark style, it fell a little short of my expectations. Gothic? Check. Creepy? Check. But a bit thin on the plot, and it left me a little confused. Told in two storylines, the novel centers around Hester Why, who has traveled to the Cornish coast to take on nursing duties for Louise Pinecroft, the sickly head of the quintessential gothic Cornish home called Morvoren House. Hester is about as unreliable a narrator as you can get: an unquenchable thirst for gin, a sipper of stolen laudanum, and a women so wracked with insecurity and jealousy that she's done some pretty bad things in her previous employment. She's a mess, and someone who just keeps digging the hole she's in, letting it get deeper and deeper. Once at Morvoren House, Hester realizes everyone there is a bit o