Welcome to my spot on the blog tour today! I’m delighted to share my review of Call Of the Curlew by Elizabeth Brooks!
Call of the Curlew
by
Elizabeth Brooks
Virginia Wrathmell has always known she will meet her death on the marsh.
One snowy New Year’s Eve, at the age of eighty-six, Virginia feels the time has finally come.
New Year’s Eve, 1939. Virginia is ten, an orphan arriving to meet her new parents at their mysterious house, Salt Winds. Her new home sits on the edge of a vast marsh, a beautiful but dangerous place. War feels far away out here amongst the birds and shifting sands – until the day a German fighter plane crashes into the marsh. The people at Salt Winds are the only ones to see it.
What happens next is something Virginia will regret for the next seventy-five years, and which will change the whole course of her life.
My Review:
It is 1939 and ten-year-old Virginia arrives in her new home on Tollbury Marsh. After spending so long at the cold orphanage, Salt Winds appeals to Virginia, the freedom and space to roam allowing her a new pocket of life to explore. Met with adoptive parents warm, kind-hearted Clem and cool, poised Lorna, Virginia swiftly settles in at Salt Winds, feeling out a new rhythm in life and treasuring the moments of discovery and affection she shares with Clem. But not everything is safe and assured. The marsh is a dangerous, desolate place and she is warned to keep away but Virginia can’t help but feel fascinated by it. When tragedy steals into life at Salt Winds, Virginia finds herself once more on the cusp of change. And everything she holds dear will begin to alter around her.
2015 and now Virginia is eighty-six-years-old. Lonely and resigned, she keeps to herself and locks out the world. The sign she has been awaiting for most of her adult life finally arrives one day on her doorstep. And here, where it began, it will end. Her demise is something she has imagined and planned countless times. She will say farewell to Salt Winds, pay tribute to the memories of her childhood and evacuate the shambling house to meet her fate. But first she will have to face something she hadn’t expected.
Elizabeth Brooks weaves a brilliant web of mystery and intrigue with Call of the Curlew. Her evocation of the diverse characters and the grim, eerie location and how it evolves through Virginia’s life is rich in detail. This book goes back and forth between two timelines. I loved following the two narratives as they unfolded. It was fascinating to see such a contrast in Virginia, how events in 1939 mould the woman she is to be in 2015. Max Deering is a cruel man who torments Virginia as a girl and his memory will continue to do so through the years, until it reaches a pinnacle on New Year’s Eve, when the sign she awaits finds its way to her doorstep.
Call of the Curlew is an atmospheric, haunting and simply stunning novel from Elizabeth Brooks! I was hooked from beginning to end. I grabbed every moment I could to read this book. I can’t wait to read more by this author!
Chilling. Haunting. Riveting.
To purchase a copy of this book, you can follow the links below:
About Elizabeth Brooks
ELIZABETH BROOKS grew up in Chester, and read Classics at Cambridge. She lives on the Isle of Man with
her husband and children. Elizabeth describes herself as a “Brontë nerd”; Call of the Curlew is her homage to the
immersive and evocative writing of Charlotte Brontë.
@ManxWriter
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Huge thanks to Anne Cater, Hannah Bright and DoubleDay for my review copy and blog tour invite!
Ronnie Turner ~ Author & Book Blogger 
Thanks so much for this amazing Blog Tour support Ronnie x
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