This book checks off a lot of boxes for me: Gothic, poignant, slow burn, literary. I enjoy reading Gothic tales in new and different locales other than your standard British moors. And there was a lot of nostalgia for me here, bringing me back to all the time spent at the home of a childhood friend where we watched Bollywood movies and I learned a bit of Hindi.
After the death of her mother, Sana and her father leave their farm in South Africa and move into a dilapidated mansion on the coast. The grand estate was abandoned in a rush in 1932 and has been falling apart ever since, eventually being turned into tenement apartments that draw an eclectic group of individuals all seeking to forget their pasts. What a cast of characters!
“…those people who live at the edge are the ones who are really living–they know what it is to exist“
Sana was hoping to leave behind the things that haunt her when they moved, but not only is she disappointed in that, she finds her new home is itself haunted by its own tragedy. The quiet, curious girl looking to understand the world around her starts digging, and much to the house’s chagrin, begins unearthing the secrets of the original inhabitants who fled over 80 years before.
It has sensed for a long time her uneasy presence in the house but it has ignored it the way it always ignores the presences of other things unrelated to its grief.
I really liked both timelines in this book: the history of Meena and Akbar, as well as Sana and her fellow misfits doing the best they can in their current day circumstances. For whatever reason stories that include twins often wind up being some of my favorites, and so the conjoined twin who did not survive the separation surgery was like an added bonus here, even though she’s horrible.
My one complaint is that I wanted a bit more from the ending. It ended okay, but the execution of the climax and resolution seemed a bit lacking to me, compared to how wonderful the writing throughout the rest of the book was. But I loved every minute building up to that point!
Jessica Crawford 