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thephdivabooks's review against another edition
5.0
Poignant and haunting—Erin Kelly’s latest novel Stone Mothers has an elegance to it that is both poetic and dark. Things are not always what they seem in this novel, and it is sort of written as a novel in reverse, beginning in present day and then moving progressively backwards in time, before resetting back to present day. I found the characters in this novel absolutely fascinating, particularly the more we learned about their past. By about 35% I struggled to put this book down!
The setting of Stone Mothers really takes the trend of refurbishing old buildings into luxury apartments to a new level, as a former Victorian mental asylum is transformed into luxury accommodations. I thought the descriptions of the hospital, both before and after the renovations, were so vivid. This is the first novel I’ve read by Erin Kelly but she has a way with building a mental image of the scenes she describes. I found this book to be incredibly atmospheric, which really added to the suspenseful feel of this gothic thriller!
We begin in present day, where architectural professor Marianne Thackeray is traveling back to Nusstead, the place where she grew up to visit her ailing mother. Marianne left Nusstead—a town built primarily around Nazareth Mental Hospital—at seventeen, with barely a backward glance. A few years before she left, Nazareth closed its doors for good—sending the town of Nusstead into an economic crisis as the majority of residents were left without work.
But the building itself—called a Stone Mother due to the belief when it was originally designed that the building itself could offer therapeutic benefits to those suffering from mental illness—always held a strange fascination for Nazareth. It is the place she first fell in love, and also the place where her darkest secret lives. A secret shared with her then boyfriend, Jesse Brame, and politician Helen Greenlaw.
Now, Marianne is worried about the secret getting out. She’s returned to Nusstead and it has set off a chain of events that she’s not sure she can stop alone…
That mysterious secret shared by an unlikely trio—I found myself wondering what it could possibly be! The first part of the book is told by Marianne in the present, and then the second part is told be Marianne in 1988—the year she was seventeen and decided to leave home. I won’t spoil anything, but this is where you learn about the secret, and it is quite unexpected! And you also learn about another secret…
Then in the third part we move even further back in time to 1958, when Helen Greenlaw was a young woman, and more secrets are revealed. Helen as a character positively fascinated me. I wish I could talk more about Helen, but I think there is little I can say without spoiling it for readers. And rest assured, you do NOT want to be spoiled on Helen’s story! From the turn to 1988 in Part 2 and 1958 in Part 3, readers will not be able to put this book down. Both storylines are complete engrossing, and tie together with one another in very intricate ways.
I’m going to leave you there with this review… I absolutely loved this book! As some readers noted, it is a bit slow in the first part, because you aren’t really sure what is going on fully. That didn’t bother me at all, I found it very typical for a gothic thriller to begin slow and build up. My recommendation—get to know Marianne and Nazareth in Part 1. It all ties together in a fantastically intricate way!!!
Thank you to the awesome team at Minotaur Books for my copy.
The setting of Stone Mothers really takes the trend of refurbishing old buildings into luxury apartments to a new level, as a former Victorian mental asylum is transformed into luxury accommodations. I thought the descriptions of the hospital, both before and after the renovations, were so vivid. This is the first novel I’ve read by Erin Kelly but she has a way with building a mental image of the scenes she describes. I found this book to be incredibly atmospheric, which really added to the suspenseful feel of this gothic thriller!
We begin in present day, where architectural professor Marianne Thackeray is traveling back to Nusstead, the place where she grew up to visit her ailing mother. Marianne left Nusstead—a town built primarily around Nazareth Mental Hospital—at seventeen, with barely a backward glance. A few years before she left, Nazareth closed its doors for good—sending the town of Nusstead into an economic crisis as the majority of residents were left without work.
But the building itself—called a Stone Mother due to the belief when it was originally designed that the building itself could offer therapeutic benefits to those suffering from mental illness—always held a strange fascination for Nazareth. It is the place she first fell in love, and also the place where her darkest secret lives. A secret shared with her then boyfriend, Jesse Brame, and politician Helen Greenlaw.
Now, Marianne is worried about the secret getting out. She’s returned to Nusstead and it has set off a chain of events that she’s not sure she can stop alone…
That mysterious secret shared by an unlikely trio—I found myself wondering what it could possibly be! The first part of the book is told by Marianne in the present, and then the second part is told be Marianne in 1988—the year she was seventeen and decided to leave home. I won’t spoil anything, but this is where you learn about the secret, and it is quite unexpected! And you also learn about another secret…
Then in the third part we move even further back in time to 1958, when Helen Greenlaw was a young woman, and more secrets are revealed. Helen as a character positively fascinated me. I wish I could talk more about Helen, but I think there is little I can say without spoiling it for readers. And rest assured, you do NOT want to be spoiled on Helen’s story! From the turn to 1988 in Part 2 and 1958 in Part 3, readers will not be able to put this book down. Both storylines are complete engrossing, and tie together with one another in very intricate ways.
I’m going to leave you there with this review… I absolutely loved this book! As some readers noted, it is a bit slow in the first part, because you aren’t really sure what is going on fully. That didn’t bother me at all, I found it very typical for a gothic thriller to begin slow and build up. My recommendation—get to know Marianne and Nazareth in Part 1. It all ties together in a fantastically intricate way!!!
Thank you to the awesome team at Minotaur Books for my copy.
paulabrandon's review against another edition
1.0
Well, this was a completely boring and pointless story.
It starts off like a thousand thrillers before it, with Marianne Thackeray returning to her hometown 30 years after this horrible, horrible thing that she did, while never divulging what this thing is. Indeed, for about 100 pages, there are a ton of stilted conversations between Marianne and her ex-boyfriend Jesse from back then that are clumsily designed to keep us in the dark about what actually happened back then. Jesse was also a part of this horrible, awful thing.
Marianne is returning home to help look after her mother, who is suffering dementia. To her surprise and horror, her husband Sam has purchased an apartment at Park Royal Manor, which has been refurbished from the Nazareth Mental Hospital, which had closed down over 30 years ago and is the site GASP SHOCK HORROR of that terrible and awful thing that Marianne was involved in.
After 100 pages, we jump back 30 years to be shown the events leading up to the terrible event. We begin to get a bit more context, in that the town suffered a major downturn after the mental hospital was shut down, putting lots of people out of work, including Jesse's father. There is a lot of anger at Helen Greenlaw, the politician who instigated the shutdown. Marianne is a teen in this section, falling for bad boy Jesse, and they spend all their time at Nazareth. There, Marianne finds documents that revel Helen's past, which sees events spiralling out of control.
The book then jumps back another 30 years to 1958, revealing Helen's past connection to Nazareth and the horrors she endured there. This part of the book is mildly interesting, and quite horrifying when you learn of the simple, treatable, normal things women got institutionalised for back then. But it's mostly pointless. Sure, it provides some motivation for why Helen would want Nazareth shut down, but doesn't provide any further twists or intrigue to the story, other than her thoughts of events that we've already seen played out in the previous sections.
In fact, there are no twists or intrigue to this story at all. It is all very flat and uninteresting with characters straight out of central casting. It ends with a laughably acklustre well-that's-convenient sequence of events that feels as if the author just got bored with what she was writing and did what she could to wrap things up. Indeed, I wondered if this was as boring to write as it was to read.
Seriously, are authors these days sitting down at their desk and thinking to themselves, "How can I make this as similar, generic, flat and uninteresting as the 200 psychological thrillers that came before it?" You could practically check off the list of psychological thriller tropes as they get trudged out.
It starts off like a thousand thrillers before it, with Marianne Thackeray returning to her hometown 30 years after this horrible, horrible thing that she did, while never divulging what this thing is. Indeed, for about 100 pages, there are a ton of stilted conversations between Marianne and her ex-boyfriend Jesse from back then that are clumsily designed to keep us in the dark about what actually happened back then. Jesse was also a part of this horrible, awful thing.
Marianne is returning home to help look after her mother, who is suffering dementia. To her surprise and horror, her husband Sam has purchased an apartment at Park Royal Manor, which has been refurbished from the Nazareth Mental Hospital, which had closed down over 30 years ago and is the site GASP SHOCK HORROR of that terrible and awful thing that Marianne was involved in.
After 100 pages, we jump back 30 years to be shown the events leading up to the terrible event. We begin to get a bit more context, in that the town suffered a major downturn after the mental hospital was shut down, putting lots of people out of work, including Jesse's father. There is a lot of anger at Helen Greenlaw, the politician who instigated the shutdown. Marianne is a teen in this section, falling for bad boy Jesse, and they spend all their time at Nazareth. There, Marianne finds documents that revel Helen's past, which sees events spiralling out of control.
The book then jumps back another 30 years to 1958, revealing Helen's past connection to Nazareth and the horrors she endured there. This part of the book is mildly interesting, and quite horrifying when you learn of the simple, treatable, normal things women got institutionalised for back then. But it's mostly pointless. Sure, it provides some motivation for why Helen would want Nazareth shut down, but doesn't provide any further twists or intrigue to the story, other than her thoughts of events that we've already seen played out in the previous sections.
In fact, there are no twists or intrigue to this story at all. It is all very flat and uninteresting with characters straight out of central casting. It ends with a laughably acklustre well-that's-convenient sequence of events that feels as if the author just got bored with what she was writing and did what she could to wrap things up. Indeed, I wondered if this was as boring to write as it was to read.
Seriously, are authors these days sitting down at their desk and thinking to themselves, "How can I make this as similar, generic, flat and uninteresting as the 200 psychological thrillers that came before it?" You could practically check off the list of psychological thriller tropes as they get trudged out.
debtat2's review against another edition
5.0
A psychological suspense with an old Victorian mental asylum at the heart of the story, some tragically wonderful characters and some brilliant plot twist will have you gripped start to finish!
Having heard only good things about this author I jumped right into this book with the hopes of it dragging me out of my reading slump and it most certainly did that!! Moving back through time it follows the lives of the two main protagonist’s, their connections to the asylum and ultimately their connections to each other than bringing the story full circle back to their present day lives.
For me personally, part 3 stole the show! Set inside the asylum with its in-depth details of the living conditions, treatments and levels of care given to the patients was a fascinating glimpse into how these institutions were run and the sheer lack of rights for the people committed into their walls. It also gives another layer to Helen’s character making her if not more likeable, but more human maybe?
Both Marianne and Helen are strong female lead characters and preconceptions of them keep shifting as the story marches forward revealing some unexpected plot twists and layers to an already twisted story.
This is going to be as big, if not bigger than He said/She said and will be one to watch for in 2019!
A must read for fans of Paula Hawkins and C.L. Taylor, I honestly do highly recommend this book to pretty much everyone!
Having heard only good things about this author I jumped right into this book with the hopes of it dragging me out of my reading slump and it most certainly did that!! Moving back through time it follows the lives of the two main protagonist’s, their connections to the asylum and ultimately their connections to each other than bringing the story full circle back to their present day lives.
For me personally, part 3 stole the show! Set inside the asylum with its in-depth details of the living conditions, treatments and levels of care given to the patients was a fascinating glimpse into how these institutions were run and the sheer lack of rights for the people committed into their walls. It also gives another layer to Helen’s character making her if not more likeable, but more human maybe?
Both Marianne and Helen are strong female lead characters and preconceptions of them keep shifting as the story marches forward revealing some unexpected plot twists and layers to an already twisted story.
This is going to be as big, if not bigger than He said/She said and will be one to watch for in 2019!
A must read for fans of Paula Hawkins and C.L. Taylor, I honestly do highly recommend this book to pretty much everyone!
chartania's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
3.75
rmarcin's review against another edition
3.0
This book is told in several parts. It starts with modern day, but then goes back into the past, when the mystery began. Stone Mothers is what insane asylums were called (now mental hospitals, sanitariums). Marianne's mother is ill, and to save Marianne from a long commute, or staying in a hotel, her husband purchases a flat in the old (now renovated) Nazareth asylum. However, Marianne is terrified because of a deeply hidden secret from her past. The asylum brings back memories of her first boyfriend, Jesse, and all the time they spent near Nazareth. The story exposes the horrors that happened in these asylums, and the barbaric treatment of the patients.
I felt that this book dragged on and on. It was murky in parts, and rehashed the same things over and over. It was confusing to follow Marianne's thoughts in the beginning, but they made more sense when the entire story was revealed. If it had been a tighter story, I think I would have enjoyed it more.
#StoneMothers #ErinKelly
I felt that this book dragged on and on. It was murky in parts, and rehashed the same things over and over. It was confusing to follow Marianne's thoughts in the beginning, but they made more sense when the entire story was revealed. If it had been a tighter story, I think I would have enjoyed it more.
#StoneMothers #ErinKelly
blogginboutbooks's review against another edition
4.0
This isn't my favorite Kelly novel, but it is atmospheric and eerie, a definitely Gothic vibe weaving throughout the story. The plot is not pulse-pounding, but it's steady. Between it and the characters, STONE MOTHERS definitely kept me engaged. It's a depressing story, but I liked it overall.
marilynw's review against another edition
4.0
The story is told from the viewpoint of Marianne in the present and then when she was seventeen, from the viewpoint of Helen from the time she was a teenager until her eighties, and from the viewpoint of Honor, Marianne's daughter, in the present. During the first section of the book, I was having a hard time getting into the book but once we got to Marianne's younger years, getting more background to the story made it more interesting, and then by the time we got to Helen's viewpoint, I was hooked. Helen's story is a sad one but I had trouble deciding if her cold parents led to Helen's inability to connect with people or if she would have been that way anyway. Whatever the case, what happened to Helen when she was young, was the catalyst for the things that happen later in the book.
A lot of the story takes place in and on the grounds of an old asylum, while it was still in use as an asylum, while it was a decrepit and dangerous mess of rubble, and lastly rebuilt as luxury apartments and cottages. A young Marianne and her young boyfriend Jesse, blackmail politician Helen and this leads to the three being tied to each other for decades to come. So many lies tie them together and each are haunted by what happened in the past and the secrets that they try to keep under wraps. The character of Helen intrigued me the most but for all she had in her life and all she accomplished, the fact that she could not connect with other people meant she had nothing at all.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this ARC.
A lot of the story takes place in and on the grounds of an old asylum, while it was still in use as an asylum, while it was a decrepit and dangerous mess of rubble, and lastly rebuilt as luxury apartments and cottages. A young Marianne and her young boyfriend Jesse, blackmail politician Helen and this leads to the three being tied to each other for decades to come. So many lies tie them together and each are haunted by what happened in the past and the secrets that they try to keep under wraps. The character of Helen intrigued me the most but for all she had in her life and all she accomplished, the fact that she could not connect with other people meant she had nothing at all.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this ARC.
milkweedfreeze's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
This was too slow! The premise was good, and I thought it was well-written and an interesting premise, but the beginning was so so slow. I really liked the characters, but this book could have been 100 pages shorter.