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A review by marilynw
Nightingale House by Steve Frech
4.0
One hundred and twenty year old Nightingale House was once the summer home of a wealthy couple. Now it's the new home of widower Daniel Price and his eight year old daughter Caitlyn. Daniel and his wife Nicole had bought this house before the family was in a car accident that killed Nicole, eight months earlier. It is only now that Daniel and Caitlyn have moved into the house. Both of them are still grieving although Daniel seems to be handling Nicole's death worse than Caitlyn.
Caitlyn has always had a vivid imagination which made some of her stories, about imaginary friends or stories about other people, verge on lies. She's been taught to tone things down, that there is a limit to how far she should take her story telling. When Caitlyn claims she is talking to a little girl who lives in the house and when Caitlyn attributes some things to the little girl, Daniel is willing to let it go at first, because he knows Caitlyn is still mourning her mother and that they have just made this big move. But Daniel is hearing things too, voices, water dripping, thumps, and he's also having vivid, disturbing dreams that seem to mesh with real life.
For all the things that take place in this house, in the present and in the 1900 timeline, the story has a very benign quality to it. The violence is not graphic, the horrors almost have a nightmarish, distancing quality to them. Daniel's overwhelming sense of grief and his extreme sleep deprivation, due to nightmares and other things, seem to overshadow everything in the story. This is not a bad thing, it just gave the story a different feeling than I had expected when I started reading this book.
Thank you to HQ Digital and NetGalley for this ARC.
Caitlyn has always had a vivid imagination which made some of her stories, about imaginary friends or stories about other people, verge on lies. She's been taught to tone things down, that there is a limit to how far she should take her story telling. When Caitlyn claims she is talking to a little girl who lives in the house and when Caitlyn attributes some things to the little girl, Daniel is willing to let it go at first, because he knows Caitlyn is still mourning her mother and that they have just made this big move. But Daniel is hearing things too, voices, water dripping, thumps, and he's also having vivid, disturbing dreams that seem to mesh with real life.
For all the things that take place in this house, in the present and in the 1900 timeline, the story has a very benign quality to it. The violence is not graphic, the horrors almost have a nightmarish, distancing quality to them. Daniel's overwhelming sense of grief and his extreme sleep deprivation, due to nightmares and other things, seem to overshadow everything in the story. This is not a bad thing, it just gave the story a different feeling than I had expected when I started reading this book.
Thank you to HQ Digital and NetGalley for this ARC.