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A review by lostinagoodbook
Ashton Hall by Lauren Belfer
4.0
A thoroughly enjoyable modern gothic mystery.
I picked this one up because I loves me a gothic mystery. Spooky old houses and a centuries old mystery? Sign me up. The mystery of this creepy old house was compelling and the results surprising. What I didn’t expect from this book was such a nuanced look at motherhood and its complexities. Children are not perfect. I mean we all know that right? But I feel like until you’ve experienced parenting a child with developmental or emotional issues or neurodivergence then it can be hard to comprehend how challenging that can be. This book speaks to that.
“We all look for hope in the narrative, for a positive trajectory, but sometimes there isn’t hope. It’s more of the same for decades, and parents have to adjust. Not just take things day by day, with everything unpredictable. Hoping against hope that their kid will become the child of their dreams, instead of reconciling themselves to the person their child actually is.”
Oh hell, that quote hit me right in the heart at 2 in the morning. In my home, as with many other parents we are dealing with increased anxiety and depression. In large part this is because of the things these kids have been experiencing the last few years. Climate anxiety, increasing gun/school violence, the pandemic and quarantines … it’s been a lot for them to deal with. I know that many of us are finding ourselves in the position of trying to shepherd our children through this seemingly unsurmountable worries. I don’t have any answers for how to help our young ones through this morass, except to keep loving them and keep adjust our own expectations. Adjust adjust adjust and then adjust some more with empathy.
Ok, big sigh, but back to the book and the main conceit of this novel, which is unravelling the mystery of who this dead corpse belongs to. Figuring that out was definitely intriguing and I enjoyed that aspect of the book a great deal. I’m going to keep an eye on this author for future books. I really liked their style. I enjoy an interesting story that also speaks to the human condition in a complex say. I hope you will like this book as well.
Disclaimer: I received this book free from Netgalley.
I picked this one up because I loves me a gothic mystery. Spooky old houses and a centuries old mystery? Sign me up. The mystery of this creepy old house was compelling and the results surprising. What I didn’t expect from this book was such a nuanced look at motherhood and its complexities. Children are not perfect. I mean we all know that right? But I feel like until you’ve experienced parenting a child with developmental or emotional issues or neurodivergence then it can be hard to comprehend how challenging that can be. This book speaks to that.
“We all look for hope in the narrative, for a positive trajectory, but sometimes there isn’t hope. It’s more of the same for decades, and parents have to adjust. Not just take things day by day, with everything unpredictable. Hoping against hope that their kid will become the child of their dreams, instead of reconciling themselves to the person their child actually is.”
Oh hell, that quote hit me right in the heart at 2 in the morning. In my home, as with many other parents we are dealing with increased anxiety and depression. In large part this is because of the things these kids have been experiencing the last few years. Climate anxiety, increasing gun/school violence, the pandemic and quarantines … it’s been a lot for them to deal with. I know that many of us are finding ourselves in the position of trying to shepherd our children through this seemingly unsurmountable worries. I don’t have any answers for how to help our young ones through this morass, except to keep loving them and keep adjust our own expectations. Adjust adjust adjust and then adjust some more with empathy.
Ok, big sigh, but back to the book and the main conceit of this novel, which is unravelling the mystery of who this dead corpse belongs to. Figuring that out was definitely intriguing and I enjoyed that aspect of the book a great deal. I’m going to keep an eye on this author for future books. I really liked their style. I enjoy an interesting story that also speaks to the human condition in a complex say. I hope you will like this book as well.
Disclaimer: I received this book free from Netgalley.