Girls of Brackenhill: A Thriller

I really went into this book blind and I am so glad I did because it did not disappoint, at least for the most part. I read this book as a buddy read with a good bookstagram friend Tierney, after she so kindly gifted me a copy off my Amazon wishlist for my 30th birthday this year! I can't wait to talk about it with her. I am starting to realize that while I enjoy spooky mansion mysteries/thrillers, they are definitely not my favorite and I think for that reason this book ended up being a four star for me and not a five star. I thought it had a very unique plot and the ending was fire, but the first half of the book dragged for me and it took quite a while to get going and into the swing of things.

To begin with, Girls of Brackenhill is about a woman, Hannah, who seems to have everything going for her in life- a fiancé, a good job, a seemingly perfect life. That is, until she is called back to the Brackenhill castle, where she spent a few summers as a child, because her aunt has died and she's the only family left. Hannah thought she escaped Brackenhill and the weird pull off this odd place, a place where her sister disappeared long ago. However, it seems there are a lot more secrets buried in Brackenhill than she could have ever imagined. I really liked this plot and the premise. It kept me interested, even if the first half of the book was a little slow going for me and it took me a while to really get invested in the story. However, the ending of the book was amazing and the pacing was extremely on point and that almost made up for the first half. I loved that there were so many things entwined in the plot and how those things came together in the end, and not in a perfect bow at all. Overall, this was great.

In continuation, the characterization in this book is great. I loved seeing what was going on in Hannah's head and her psyche and then also getting flashbacks to the past and seeing how her psyche got to where it is at presently. This book was a great example of flawed people doing very messed up things, even if at first glance they didn't seem all that extremely flawed. Moretti was not afraid to dive deep into the darkest recesses of the human mind and it made the characters so much more relatable for that very reason. I also loved the complicated relationships all the characters had developed with each other because they felt very accurate, the most intimate relationships are usually the messiest of all. I will definitely be picking up Moretti's other books soon and have a few saved on my Scribd app already.

Finally, the writing style was pretty good in my opinion. It painted a very vivid picture of this creepy Brackenhill castle and all the weird and creepy things that seem to be going on in there. I was able to picture myself in the scene as it was happening and that definitely spiked my anxiety a bit as well. It was only a bit more intricate than I usually prefer my writing style to be but that didn't bother me much and I was able to get through the book without a problem anyways.

In conclusion, I would definitely recommend this book because it's a very well done castle suspense/mystery trope. There aren't many things I would change about this novel, aside from speeding the pace up in the first half of the book. But even with that, I think it's a book that all my thriller/mystery/suspense lovers would devour in a few sittings. And the short chapters definitely don't hurt either.