Not every house is a home…
Belinda Bainbridge has spent her life in the shadow of her anxious mother, so when her father-in-law dies at The Bridge, his remote ancestral seat, she is secretly thrilled. His death means she, her husband Wilfred and their children can relocate and finally begin to create their own happy home together: born a merchant’s daughter, she will now be lady of the manor.
But their new home quickly proves far from ideal. The garden is a wilderness, the estate is struggling financially, there are whispers about the mysterious death of a servant many years before while their young son, Freddy, seems unusually fixated on the strange wooden figures – so-called ‘silent companions’ – that were once owned by his ancestors.
When Wilfred’s charismatic brother, Nathan, arrives unexpectedly from abroad, bringing a very different account of the family’s past, Belinda begins to question what her husband has told her. What really lies behind the sad history of the house?
And are Belinda’s children truly safe here?
Dark bleatings, my haunted tribe! It’s a pleasure to get to talk about this book today because Laura Purcell’s work is an exception to a long-running rule for me, and that’s that I typically just don’t find ghost stories very entertaining. I don’t know why, exactly. Perhaps I’m not that interested in ghosts, perhaps I am actually too spooked by ghosts even though I don’t believe them to enjoy them, perhaps I tend to find gothic, haunting novels all a bit samey? Whatever the reason, I don’t often gravitate towards this subgenre, and it’s even more rare that I find myself raving about them.
The Silent Companions absolutely delighted me when I read that. I was so easily immersed in the atmosphere and wrapped up in the story, and what the author decided to do with the plot and the added element of those creepy wooden carvings really impressed me. I always go into a book as blind as possible without reading the synopsis, so when I picked up House of Splinters, imagine my pleasure when I discovered I was reading a tie-in to The Silent Companions.
It’s 1774 and Belinda tastes freedom. After spending her life squished beneath her mother’s overbearing thumb, she’s excited at the prospect of a fresh start with her family in her husband’s inherited family estate. They have a son called Freddy and a second baby on the way, and the idea of moving further away and living the high life, or what she regards as a higher life, is thrilling. That is, until they get there and she discovers the place isn’t quite as it was sold to her. It’s run down, the grounds are a mess, the locals are afraid of the place and by default, seem to have a general disdain towards her husband, and there’s also an unsettling history that swirls around murder. Things start taking a real turn when Freddy bonds with a silent companion, and what initially seems like the harmless fancies of a child are illuminated as something more sinister.
It took me a minute to really sink into the story but when I did, I was truly reeled in. I loved the characters. Belinda is a sympathetic and nice lady who just wants the best for her and her growing family, Freddy is just a kid with a new manor to explore, and Wilfred (the husband) is not what I expected from a traditional husband in the 1700’s. He’s not without his faults, as it turns out, but he is a caring and doting husband that is interested in his wife’s wellbeing, comfort, and her pregnancy, and I really liked him. It was realising how surprised I was to like a husband character in this time period that elevated my enjoyment of the story and also made me a little sad for how truly low the bar is for what makes a decent man in a gothic period piece. Regardless, this did paint a different dynamic to what I’m used to seeing in ghosty stories set in the past.
Additionally, we have staff in this manor who are depicted more as extended family and they behave as such, and since Wilfred seemed like a perfectly nice chap, it deepened the intrigue for why the locals hate them so much. This seems like a nice family that most likely came from an equally nice household (on Wilfred’s side), so their local reputation made me scared for them because it could only be coming from the property itself. So, what is wrong with this place…?
I sometimes struggle with the pacing of spooky gothic novels and often find they lag a bit in the middle for me, but this one, though yes – a slow burn – kept me hooked with plenty of weird details, unsettling occurences, and the injection of the occasional new character or an illuminating detail about someone already embedded in the character list. There’s an ambiguous air to the spooky happenings as disagreements about whether or not they’re actually spooky or being manufactured arise, and I loved the way this was resolved in the end.
All in all, this is a really solid, atmospheric story with great characters, a perfect setting, and unique elements. I absolutely loved it and would highly recommend it. 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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