••• The International Writers Magazine - 22 Years on-line - Book Reviews

Century by Sarah Singleton Simon & Schuster ISBN 1-416-90135-3 • Sam Hawksmoor review Sometimes it’s a real pleasure to come across a book on your shelves that you haven’t read. Quite how that’s possible I am not sure – I thought I’d read everything twice during lockdown. Nevertheless, Century was missed and what a little gem it is.

A story of two young sisters Mercy & Charity, living every day the same in a cold, old house surrounded by a perpetual winter in 1890.  The routine is stifling, the Governess stern and evil, the father rarely seen, the mother never mentioned.
           
Mercy thinks she has seen a ghost. She has seen many in the house before but this one is new- a face beneath the icy pond.  A few days later, just after she has found a snowdrop on her pillow, she meets a man called Claudius in the old church who claims he is a relative. She has never met a stranger before, but he makes Mercy question her existence. She is unsettled by the encounter and whether she understands it or not, she has begun a journey to unravel the terrible family secrets and what holds them seemingly frozen in time.

A reading pleasure, the characters beautifully drawn and the mystery quickly draws you in.

You may have to haunt a second-hand bookshop to find it, however.
© Sam Hawksmoor June 1st 2021
author of Mission Longshot and The Repossession of Genie Magee (Now back in print)

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