This story revolves around a church in a small town in England. The book summary starts: "Five hundred years ago, eight protestant martyrs were burned at the stake here. Thirty years ago, two teenage girls disappeared without a trace. And two months ago, the vicar of the local parish killed himself." Color me instantly intrigued. This book follows multiple characters across two different timelines but mainly focuses on Jack Brooks, the new vicar for the town of Chapel Croft, and Flo, Jack's daughter. As with many sleepy small towns, there are darker things hidden under the idyllic landscape.
This book packs a heck of a lot into just over 300 pages and the pacing does not let up the whole time. I was immediately pulled into the story and I could not put it down until I was finished. There are a lot of moving parts and people to keep track of, but the overall plot I found relatively straightforward. There were some nice, quiet moments in the book where the characters could think a bit about their situation and the events unfolding, but it wasn't long (maybe a paragraph or two) before we were back in the thick of things. I found this to be a
pretty equal split thriller/mystery/horror which I really enjoyed and
all of my favorite elements to those three categories I found in this
book. I think Tudor did a fantastic job of cycling through the different aspects of the story at just the right moments for me to never feel exhausted at how fast one plot line was moving. We skipped around a whole bunch and that kept the pacing up but didn't make it feel like the story was moving unbelievably fast. The timing for the chapter breaks were really well chosen and the best way I can describe the reading experience is that the back of my brain was chewing over the information we just learned in chapter 6 while the front of my brain was following all the new things in chapter 7. Then, by the time I would get back to the first plot line, it felt like I had enough time to process what happened and then could continue with the story.
What I would imagine will be the most hit-or-miss part of this book for readers is the multiple POVs and timelines. I, however, loved the structure and couldn't imagine this story being told any other way. We follow a total of 5 characters, but 2 of them only come up every once and a while. Our main POVs are Jack, Flo, and an unnamed narrator - all taking place in the present day. The other 2 POVs are the two girls that disappeared 30 years ago and we follow the weeks leading up to their disappearance. Jack's POV is told in first person and the other four are third person, which is the one aspect I found jarring only because in my flow of reading I wouldn't immediately realize that we changed POV with the new chapter. I'm more used to the chapter headings telling us which character we're following which they didn't have in the ARC I was reading (but that may change with the finished copies, I'm not sure). I really liked how each POV had their own plot line and mystery for the reader to follow. There wasn't a single time the POV switched where I wanted to skim through just to get back to another plot line. Every time, I was excited to find out more about X or Y now that we're back with this other character. The plot lines do all converge with the number of reveals at the end so I found the payoff to be satisfying. Some of the reveals were hinted at (pretty strongly in my opinion) earlier on in the book but there were more subtle ones that I didn't see coming. Even the reveals that I saw coming were still interesting because I didn't count on how that reveal would impact the other characters we're following.
I do wish we had gotten more interaction and politics of the day to day activities of being a vicar in a small town. There's one main family in the village who is described as being very influential and donates a lot of money to the church which does come up later in the book but I would have liked to see that family using some of that power earlier for somewhat mundane things. I think this would have helped flesh out Jack's world a bit more and set the town's hierarchy more clearly in my head. Along the same lines, I would have liked to see more community gatherings to see the towns people interact with each other as well as with Jack and Flo to get a better sense of how different Jack and Flo are as newcomers. We get a bit of this during a pub-quiz night but I wanted maybe an extra 50 pages scattered throughout the book with these smaller sort of scenes and then I'd be very happy.
I really loved how well the historical events and town traditions were integrated into the story. The titular burning girls are a town tradition to honor the spirits of the martyrs. They are small figures made out of twigs that are set alight in a ceremony held every year by the village on the anniversary of the martyr deaths. Over time, they have evolved into a ghost story of sorts where local legend says if you see the spirits of two of the martyrs then danger will befall you. The story of the martyrs gets brought up often throughout the book and at times makes characters question if ghosts are real. It adds and extra layer to the story overall since the characters and the reader aren't sure what exactly is real or if there's a more logical explanation to what is going on. The story doesn't go full paranormal ghost-hunter but the reader is reminded of the legend just enough to keep it in mind as maybe a possibility of something else going on. This is where a lot of the more horror-leaning elements are integrated into the story and I think it is a really great way of adding an overall spooky atmosphere to the book without having to go with big scares.
Finally, I found all the characters were really well developed and their personalities so different that I was able to remember who everyone was. I was a bit worried going into the book that Jack, being a vicar, would have a bit of a superiority complex or be a little too perfect just because of being involved in the church. However, we learn Jack's backstory and how faith was something learned later in life that Jack chose to pursue. There was a line toward the beginning about how faith is something that needs to be consistently cultivated and worked on like a marriage and, as a non-religious person myself, I thought that was a really interesting view for Jack to have and be so upfront about it with both the reader as well as some of the people in the town. There were a lot of characters in this book but I was able to keep all of them straight in my mind because their personalities were so clearly defined and shown to the reader. The personalities weren't detailed in the way that I know everyone's favorite color, but they were detailed in such a way that I know what their place in the story was and their overall connection to the town and history. Again, I would have liked to have seen some more interactions between some of the different townspeople to see how their different personalities would interact in this small town and what tensions would arise. We did learn a few different connections and personal histories of some of the people in the story, but as a more character-focused reader, I ideally would have had a bit more. Give me a big town meeting or something where tensions are high and there are a bunch of snide remarks and I'm a happy reader.
Overall, this was a great, fast paced mystery/thriller/horror that kept me engaged all the way to the end. Multi-POV and dual timelines really helped develop a rich and complex town mystery and the story had a good payoff in the end.
305 pages.
Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC.
Expected publication date is February 9, 2021.
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