House of Ash

by Cat Winters

After hearing voices among an eerie copse of trees in the woods, seventeen-year-old Curtis must confront his worst fear: that he has inherited his father’s mental illness. A desperate search for answers leads him to discover Gravenhearst, a labyrinth mansion that burned down in 1894. When he locks eyes with a steely Victorian girl in a forgotten mirror, he’s sure she’s one of the fire’s victims. If he can unravel the mystery, he can save his sanity . . . and possibly the girl who haunts his dreams.

But more than 100 years in the past, the girl in the mirror is fighting her own battles. When her mother disappears and her sinister stepfather reveals his true intentions, Mila and her sister fight to escape Gravenhearst and unravel the house’s secrets—before it devours them both.
 

• ISBN13: 9781419723698
• Publish Date: 26 September 2017 (first published 2 April 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Abrams
• Imprint: Amulet Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: https://abramsandchronicle.co.uk/book/9781419723698-house-of-ash/

Reviews

[Kelsenator]

3.5 stars, review to come.

[celinenyx]

In the Shadow of Blackbirds is one of my favourite books of 2013. Aside from superb story-telling and great characters, it features séances and ghosts, a flu epidemic that hangs over everyone like a dark cloud, the war that costs the lives of thousands of boys and men and one sixteen year-old girl stuck in the middle of it.

Her father imprisoned for being anti-war, Mary Shelley is forced to live with her aunt in San Diego. Returning to the place her love, Stephen, used to live and to see his family again brings back memories. Stephen is at the front, and he hasn't been returning her letters for a while. Life during 1918 is hard, but it gets even harder when you start to see ghosts.

The main reason I loved In the Shadow of Blackbirds so much is the wonderful backdrop of the story. If this had just been a romantic story between a girl and her childhood sweetheart that has gone to war, I wouldn't be all that interested. The influenza is a huge part of the story, just like it controlled almost everyone's thoughts in 1918. The book has chilling vintage photos of nurses and soldiers wearing influenza masks, a tiny barrier between them and almost certain death. The fact that millions were dying at that time isn't glossed over in this book. Death is everywhere, and can hit anyone at any time.

The combination of the flu, the war and the tendency to fall back to Victorian notions of spirituality because of all the casualties provides an amazingly rick background for the story. It's scary, and otherworldly, yet still feels so close because so much of what is described in In the Shadow of Blackbirds actually happened.

I was starting to get tired of young-adult fiction with its shallow plots and characters (at least, in the books I seemed to be reading lately), but In the Shadow of Blackbirds proves to me that there are still amazing young-adult books being written that transcend the genre clichés. It has a heroine I can actually root for that isn't dependant on a guy, it has a love I can believe in and it has villains that are more of a dark-gray than pure cartoon-y black. The pictures just make an already amazing book even more haunting. I can't wait to read Cat Winter's next book.