A chilling atmospheric read

Woman's Own

There are shivers aplenty in Purcell's return to the setting of ... The Silent Companions [...] Purcell is brilliant at racheting up the tensions as the family try and make a home in the old mansion

Daily Mail

Purcell's skill in mixing the everyday with the macabre remains impressive

The Times

If you relish an atmospheric ghost story with a twist, this one is for you

Candis

Laura Purcell has done it again, delivering a suspenseful, atmospheric story that progresses with a creeping sense of dread at each turn of the page. Weaving family secrets, resentful villagers, and eerie wooden companions into a tale that creeps under your skin like splinters, this is a Gothic offering that will keep you reading long past midnight … and sleeping with the lights on

Susan Stokes-Chapman, Sunday Times bestselling author of Pandora

Laura's books are always an enormous treat, and this one is no exception. It is so beautifully vivid, claustrophobic and macabre - and it balances the picturesque and the horrifying perfectly (the roses! the splinters! argh!). On one level it's a masterful page-turner, but on another it's a wonderful metaphor for buried secrets and injustice and the damage they wreak when they begin to reveal themselves... A real pleasure

Bridget Collins, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Silence Factory