MANCHESTER 1888
Through the darkness of a mid-winter nightshift, the flicker of a candle flame illuminates the exhaustion in Dr Warren Carter’s eyes; memories of a painful surgery and the fine line of human frailty haunt his every thought. A nightcap with the beautiful Rosie is just the tonic he needs.
What should’ve been a pleasant encounter soon turns sinister when the young nurse disappears without a trace.
One by one more disappearances occur at the hospital, until a private investigator is brought in to assist. But rather than finding answers, he becomes trapped in a nightmare of his own making…
Season’s bleatings, my festive tribe (including you, Krampus, if you’re here…)! Hold onto your souls with both hands and pray to whatever you worship, because The Soul Thief is afoot!
This story starts tense, then takes your hand and sinks you into the tale so you relax a bit, and then switches things up on you just when you’re starting to chill out. We start with a couple of characters and spend a good chunk of time with them, and then we’re thrust into the lives of others. I’m a very change-resistant person so I found this a bit jarring initially, but I trusted the author to take my hand again and see me through this transition, and she did!
Something I’d like to make a note of here is that typically, I’m not the ideal reader for a gothic horror story set in the past. I much prefer contemporary settings (most likely because I know so little history that I struggle to visualise things set in the 1800s), and of all subgenres of horror, tales of the gothic variety are not what I usually opt for. I, perhaps unfairly, associate gothic horror with verbose, flamboyant, purple prose. Literature, if you will, and this isn’t my forte either. I quite likely assume I’m going to struggle with the language because most of the gothic horror that I have read also belongs in the classics section, and it was all written at least 100 years ago.
I found the author’s style refreshing. It was accessible without being simplistic, with a literary flair without stretching too far (for me) into pretty word salad. I also had no problem with the time period, because the picture was very clearly painted and translated to me.
While I did find that the pacing was a touch on the slow side, overall I’d say this is an eerie and very ambitious creepy story featuring complex characters and relationships. Don’t trust your own eyes!
If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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