Praised for her ability to brilliantly blend history and fiction, Laura Andersen (The Tudor Series, The Boleyn Trilogy) delivers a story of epic proportion in THE DARKLING BRIDE (A Ballantine Hardcover, on sale March 6, 2018) about three generations of Irish nobles who must face their long forbidden family secrets.
The Gallagher family has called Deeprath Castle home for seven hundred years. Nestled in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland, the estate is now slated to become a public trust, and book lover and scholar Carragh Ryan is hired to take inventory of its historic library. But after meeting Aidan, the current Viscount Gallagher, and his enigmatic family, Carragh knows that her task will be more challenging than she’d thought.
Two decades before, Aidan’s parents died violently at Deeprath. The case, which was never closed, has recently been taken up by a new detective determined to find the truth. The couple’s unusual deaths harken back a century, when twenty-three-year-old Lady Jenny Gallagher also died at Deeprath under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind an infant son and her husband, a renowned writer who never published again. These incidents only fueled fantastical theories about the Darkling Bride, a local legend of a sultry and dangerous woman from long ago whose wrath continues to haunt the castle.
The past catches up to the present, and odd clues in the house soon have Carragh wondering if there are unseen forces stalking the Gallagher family. As secrets emerge from the shadows and Carragh gets closer to answers—and to Aidan—could she be the Darkling Bride’s next victim?
LAURA ANDERSEN has a B.A. in English (with an emphasis in British history) that she puts to use by reading everything she can lay her hands on. She is married with four children.
My Thoughts
In the Darkling Bride, a young girl named Carragh is hired to help to do inventory on a centuries old library located at a castle in Ireland. She's a total book nerd, and is super exited about the position even though it's temporary, especially since one of her favorite 18th century authors married one of the castle ancestors. She's hoping to find a novel he had started, but never published that centered around the myth of the Darkling Bride. But Carragh soon learns this job isn't what she expected. The Gallagher family can be snobs, even the handsome Aidan that she finds herself attracted to. Plus, the cops have reopened the case of his parent's mysterious deaths. Add to this the lurking ghost of the Darkling Bride, and Carragh isn't sure she'll make it out of the castle alive.
This is one of my favorite books so far this year. It has a little of everything. Because they flash back and forth between the past and present, you get historical fiction mixed with contemporary suspense and romance. You also have elements of the supernatural and Victorian Goth. This is a story that will capture you in the first pages, and leave you hooked until the very end. I found myself trying to rearrange my schedule each day to try to fit in at least a few chapters. This is definitely a five-star novel and highly recommended
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