Review | Quiet Neighbors | Catriona McPherson

Quiet Neighbors

It’s the oldest bookshop in a town full of bookshops; rambling and disordered, full of treasures if you look hard. Jude found one of the treasures when she visited last summer, the high point of a miserable vacation. Now, in the depths of winter, when she has to run away, Lowell’s chaotic bookshop in that backwater of a town is the safe place she runs to.

Jude needs a bolt-hole; Lowell needs an assistant and, when an affordable rental is thrown in too, life begins to look up. The gravedigger’s cottage isn’t perfect for a woman alone but at least she has quiet neighbors.

Quiet, but not silent. The long dead and the books they left behind both have tales to tell and the dusty rooms of the bookshop are not the haven they seem to be. Lowell’s past and Jude’s present are a dangerous cocktail of secrets and lies and someone is coming to light the taper that could destroy everything.

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I was pleasantly surprised once I finished my first novel from Catriona McPherson. Not quite the edge-of-my-seat ghost story I expected, I didn’t care that it turned out not to be a traditional ghost story at all but instead a psychological mystery about past secrets in a tiny Scottish village. The layers of deceit are insane! Not only is the narrator unreliable, but every character is openly hiding something and the book plays out this intricate dance where all the characters are squared off, refusing to show each other their cards but ultimately getting caught-out because, in such a small village, there are only so many places to hide.

Quiet Neighbors is a cozy mystery with swearing. Most of the book takes place in Lowell’s used-books shop that is reminiscent of The Burrow in Harry Potter. The rest takes place either in Lowell’s dusty, old house with a view of the seaside, or in the little cottage by the cemetery. Both homes act like time machines, transporting the characters back about two decades once they cross the threshold, which really adds to the mystery of the town’s secrets. This was the perfect book to read just before bed—mysterious but relaxing at the same time. I can’t wait to read more of this author’s books!

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THE HOUSE BETWEEN TIDES by Sarah Maine

3 out of 5

In Sarah Maine’s The House Between Tides, a deceased painter’s Scottish summer house is inherited by Hetty. Her attention is immediately brought to the bones discovered under the centuries-old manor, and the story of the manor’s previous owners is slowly woven together. Theo Blake and his young wife Beatrice had a happy start, but their relationship soon grew troubled as the house and its memories haunted the artist. What happened that led to the body under the floorboards?

Like Theo Blake, Maine is a painter in her own right, sucking the reader in through the picturesque Scottish landscape. Beatrice’s storyline throbs with intensity and keeps the story alive. In contrast, Hetty and company are far from fully formed characters; it is clear that Maine cared more for the characters of the past and neglected to bring the same interest and tension into the present storyline. Additionally, the plot does little to build suspense in the reader until the end. Not that the novel is boring, but rather Maine carries the reader along a horizontal path that suddenly spikes with fifty pages left to go. A slow read that would have worked better had Maine focused on the stronger storyline and done away with the other all together.