Title: Bone China

Author: Laura Purcell

Publisher: Raven Books

Publishing date: 19 September 2019

Genre: Gothic/Historical Fiction

Source: Review Copy

My rating: 4/5

Blurb (as on Goodreads):

Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft’s family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken. But Dr Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the same disease in the cliffs beneath his new Cornish home. While he devotes himself to his controversial medical trials, Louise finds herself increasingly discomfited by the strange tales her new maid tells of the fairies that hunt the land, searching for those they can steal away to their realm.

Forty years later, Hester Why arrives at Morvoren House to take up a position as nurse to the now partially paralysed and almost entirely mute Miss Pinecroft. Hester has fled to Cornwall to try and escape her past but surrounded by superstitious staff enacting bizarre rituals, she soon discovers that her new home may be just as dangerous as her last.

Bone China was my first Laura Purcell’s book and my first ever Gothic fiction read. I have fallen in love with Purcell’s atmospheric writing and flamboyant narrative. As a reader, you would be able to feel the coldness in the air and the numbness in your feet. Such is her narrative. Her skillfully woven story with the essences of Cornish Folklore, Science, History and suspense evokes the unsettling fear with each and every passing chapter.

The story is told in three different timelines. Hester Why’s past in Honcover, Hester Why’s present where she nurses the now paralyzed Lady Pinecroft in Morvoren house and the another in which we had been taken 40 years aback to Lady Pinecroft’s early life where she and her father tries to find the cure for Consumption, the disease that ravaged her family. The switch over of these three different timelines was smooth and each part was good on its own however it didn’t come well together.

Though our protagonist Miss Why was not very reliable as she always banked on Opium and Ladanudum, I found her part quite interesting than Lady Pinecroft’s. During the late 18th and early 19th century, people were largely affected by phthisis/consumption, known today as tuberculosis and Purcell has perfectly blended this part of history into gothic fiction. It was also interesting to learn about the fact that one of the main ingredients for making bone china pottery is bone ash which I’m completely unaware of until reading this book.

Creeda’s weird behaviour and all her talking about the fairies and changelings, the uncanny array of Bone China in Lady Pinecroft’s room (for whatever reason had the Lady of the house transfixed), the images in the pattern of the porcelain changing its shape, all these elements are enough to stir the eerieness as well as the anticipation of what was about to happen but sadly all the tension the author had built leads us to nowhere and that’s where I got disappointed.

Bone China is undoubtedly a spine chilling read but certain things were not given proper closure and that left with an unsatisfactory ending. Maybe I’m not a person who loves open ending but that’s not going to stop me from checking out Purcell’s other works. I just loved her atmospheric writing and brilliant narrative. I would definitely recommend this book but I suggest you read without any high expectations.

*Thank you Bloomsbury IN for providing me with an advance reader copy of this book. All opinions are my own.*