Sarai Walker
May 2022
ISBN 9780358251873 (ISBN10: 0358251877)
About:
New Mexico, 2017: Sylvia Wren is one of the most important American artists of the past century. Known as a recluse, she avoids all public appearances. There’s a reason: she’s living under an assumed identity, having outrun a tragic past. But when a hungry journalist starts chasing her story, she’s confronted with whom she once was: Iris Chapel.
Connecticut, 1950: Iris Chapel is the second youngest of six sisters, all heiresses to a firearms fortune. They’ve grown up cloistered in a palatial Victorian house, mostly neglected by their distant father and troubled mother, who believes that their house is haunted by the victims of Chapel weapons. The girls long to escape, and for most of them, the only way out is marriage. But not long after the first Chapel sister walks down the aisle, she dies of mysterious causes, a tragedy that repeats with the second, leaving the rest to navigate the wreckage, to heart-wrenching consequences.
Ultimately, Iris flees the devastation of her family, and so begins the story of Sylvia Wren. But can she outrun the family curse forever?
My Review:
Gothic Ghost stories aren’t a genre I would normally look at, but the outline of the story got my attention and I was drawn to read it. Having never read Sarai Walker before I had no idea what to expect.
Thank you to Netgalley for affording me the opportunity to read this outstanding book.
From the outset I was gripped and grabbed any moment in the day to continue reading the compelling lives of the Chapel sisters.
Sarai’s writing made me feel as though I was “just outside the frame” but still very much part of their story, laughing with them in the wedding cake house, enjoying the lavish lifestyle their father’s business afforded them, even visualizing their beautiful dresses was easy from the wondrous descriptions Sarai’s pen had scribed across the pages. Not for a single moment did I think their mother was crazy but instead wishing they would listen to her. I felt like I mourned the loss of each one and hoped against hope that somehow each sister didn’t die. I was so invested in the story that I really wanted Calla, Rosalind, Aster, Daphne and Zelie to come back for Iris and right up until the last line I hoped they would.
