A review by melcanread
Hazardous Spirits by Anbara Salam

dark emotional medium-paced

4.0

Right off the bat, I want to talk about how Anbara Salam wrote Evelyn's fear and grief. How all over the place she seemed and how much anxiety she had throughout the whole novel. At times I did think that Evelyn could be a bit overbearing and controlling, especially over Robert, but given 1920s English society was still an awful, judgemental place, you can hardly blame her for some of her actions. Society was a horrible place for women, and still is. Of vourse Evelyn knew everything Robert did would reflect on her and she'd be blamed for it all. 

Robert was a great character to read about. I'd say he was a perfect likeness to British men, especially those in the 1920s, but even reflective of men today. He was pushy, inconsiderate, selfish, manipulative and downright ugly. Evie may have been toxic, but Robert was a whole nuclear power station. You could see this throughout the novel, but never more present than when

Evelyn told him that Wee Charlie had been found, and Robert gaslit, gatekept and girlbossed the entire audience, and even his own wife, into believing that he and Clarence were right all along. I was so proud of Evie when she decided to leave him. Again, you could see his manipulation coming through when he was trying to win Evie back by telling her that he made contact with Dolly, despite Evelyn asking him not to He knew it would get her to listen to him and I have to know if it worked.

Also, the cliffhanger of "Don't you want to know what she said?" was absolutely delicious.

In my opinion, the way that Salam wrote this novel was nothing short of masterful. All of the readings that Clarence and Robert gave were vague enough that they absolutely could have been fake, which is exactly how modern day mediums operate, too. Salam ultimately left the actual decision up to the reader, and wonderfully skirted her way through those pages without anything genuinely supernatural happening, which I thought was genius.

One thing that I will say was that I thought the story was quite stagnant. Nothing of any substance really started happening until the end of the novel, and then we were given that cliffhanger.  While I can appreciate life isn't always a constantly moving activity, an that this book is true to life in certain aspects, I think it would have been great to have had a bit more drama in the middle

besides Dolly's ex-husband showing up out of the blue and the whole debarkle down at Victrum's place.

Overall, this story was incredible. It was written beautifully and I can't wait to read Salam's other works.

Also,

I'm fully convinced that Evelyn's secret was that she had an abortion and that made her infertile.