Fear blisters through this town like a fever…
When Teddy Colne arrives in the small town of Rye, he believes he will be able to settle down and leave his past behind him. Little does he know that fear blisters through the streets like a fever. The locals tell him to stay away from an establishment known only as Berry & Vincent, that those who rub too closely to its proprietor risk a bad end.
Despite their warnings, Teddy is desperate to understand why Rye has come to fear this one man, and to see what really hides behind the doors of his shop.
Ada moved to Rye with her young son to escape a damaged childhood and years of never fitting in, but she’s lonely, and ostracised by the community. Ada is ripe for affection and friendship, and everyone knows it.
As old secrets bleed out into this town, so too will a mystery about a family who vanished fifty years earlier, and a community living on a knife edge.
Teddy looks for answers, thinking he is safe, but some truths are better left undisturbed, and his past will find him here, just as it has always found him before. And before long, it will find Ada too.
It's such a pleasure to be hosting the blog tour for So Pretty today. Many thanks to Ronnie Turner, Orenda Books and Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me and for my advance digital copy of the novel.
So Pretty might be the title of Ronnie Turner's gothic thriller but while the writing is beautifully descriptive, there is nothing pretty about what occurs here. The book positively exudes malevolence and is so dark, I almost felt I needed a shower after reading it, to cleanse the last traces of horror from my skin – I have a feeling it will linger long in my mind, however...
Teddy and Ada are both newcomers to Rye. Both have difficult pasts, full of brutal secrets and neither find it easy to fit in. Teddy has more recently moved to the small town and quickly finds work as an assistant in a strange curiosity shop; Berry & Vincent. Locals soon regale him with warnings about Mr Vincent and he attempts to find out more, particularly regarding Vincent's former business partner, Berry. Teddy uncovers the harrowing reason why Berry and his family fled Rye but even this isn't enough to persuade him to quit his job. The sense of foreboding is almost too overwhelming and there's a grim inevitability to Teddy's desire to figure out the truth about Vincent and his macabre miscellanea.
Meanwhile, Ada is a single mother with a little boy, Albie and having been forced to start a new life for herself after she became pregnant, she is desperately lonely. Her attempts to make new friends in the town have so far come to nothing, so it isn't surprising that she and Teddy should be drawn together. It's what comes next which is so disturbing and what could have been a redemptive story of hope is instead something far more sinister.
The narrative is shared between the pair and with both so damaged, their separate perspectives never quite feel right. I must admit to finding both difficult to warm to at first but as the truth of their fractured childhoods is disclosed, it shouldn't come as a shock that their respective scars mark them as different. Vincent is a deeply unpleasant man but in the best tradition of gothic fiction, it's the building at the centre of the story which is arguably more terrifying than anything. Is there something within its walls which feeds the darkness in people's souls? Mr Vincent isn't really a shopkeeper, he's a collector and the shop is cluttered with nightmare-inducing artefacts. As the answer to whether he is really a monster or just misunderstood is gradually revealed, Teddy and Ada are irrevocably changed and the result is utterly spine-chilling. As the book progresses, a terrible sense of dread leeches out of the pages of this compellingly malignant novel.
So Pretty is a startling exploration of evil and of nature and nurture, family secrets, obsession, and the public's insatiable fascination with the worst of society. It's an intense, terrifying read but more than that, it's exquisitely crafted with a lyrical turn of phrase throughout. An impressively unsettling novel from an exciting talent.
So Pretty is published by Orenda Books and can be purchased from their website or bookshop.org, Hive, Waterstones, Amazon or your favourite independent bookshop.
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Thanks for the blog tour support x
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