The Widow of Pale Harbor
by Hester Fox
From the author of the buzzed-about THE WITCH OF WILLOW HALL comes an atmospheric follow-up novel set in historic New England, about a minister who takes a position in a small Maine town plagued by strange occurances that resemble the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, and the woman--rumored to be a witch and a murderer--presumed to be behind them.
Maine, 1846. Gideon Stone is desperate to escape the ghosts that haunt him in Massachusetts after his wife's death, so he moves to Pale Harbor, Maine, where there is a vacancy for a new minister. Gideon and his late wife had always dreamed of building their own church, and Pale Harbor is the perfect opportunity.
But not all is as it seems in the sleepy town of Pale Harbor. Strange, unsettling things have been happening, and the townspeople know that only one person can be responsible: Sophronia Carver, a widow who lives with a spinster maid in the decaying Castle Carver on the edge of town. Sophronia is a recluse, rumored to be a witch who killed her husband.
When Gideon meets her, he knows the charming, beautiful woman cannot be guilty of anything. Together, Gideon and Sophronia realize that the mysterious events have one thing in common: they all contain an element from the wildly popular stories of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. And when the events escalate to murder, Gideon and Sophronia must find the real killer, before it's too late for them both.
Momma Says: 3 stars⭐⭐⭐
The Widow of Pale Harbor is marketed as domestic suspense, historical fiction, and gothic. I would certainly agree with the historical fiction and gothic labels, and while there is suspense, it is overshadowed by romance. The romance moves a little too quickly, and most times, it felt like the author's focus was all about Gideon and Sophronia being so smitten with each other. On the mystery side of things, such as they are, I really liked the tie-in to Poe, although this doesn't pack the same punch as Poe's work. Despite getting so much romance when I expected a mystery, the story held my attention, and the characters were interesting. Helen, in particular, was an intriguing character to read. I suppose she technically should've been a secondary character, but she kind of stole the show for me. Hester Fox does weave a good tale - a little on the wordy side, but good nonetheless. In the end, this one had its positives and negatives, and for me, they balanced out, leaving me somewhere in the middle.
The Widow of Pale Harbor is marketed as domestic suspense, historical fiction, and gothic. I would certainly agree with the historical fiction and gothic labels, and while there is suspense, it is overshadowed by romance. The romance moves a little too quickly, and most times, it felt like the author's focus was all about Gideon and Sophronia being so smitten with each other. On the mystery side of things, such as they are, I really liked the tie-in to Poe, although this doesn't pack the same punch as Poe's work. Despite getting so much romance when I expected a mystery, the story held my attention, and the characters were interesting. Helen, in particular, was an intriguing character to read. I suppose she technically should've been a secondary character, but she kind of stole the show for me. Hester Fox does weave a good tale - a little on the wordy side, but good nonetheless. In the end, this one had its positives and negatives, and for me, they balanced out, leaving me somewhere in the middle.
❃❃ARC provided by NetGalley and Graydon House
Sophronia took the first page and ran her gaze over it. It was one of Mr. Poe’s stories; she’d read it when it had come out, but it hadn’t made much of an impression on her and she’d subsequently forgotten all about it. Nathaniel, her deceased husband, had never liked Poe; he’d said the man’s stories were too sensationalist and catered to the excitable nerves of women. But that hadn’t stopped him from falling all over himself to get one of the macabre stories published in the magazine when the submission landed on his desk. The suspenseful installments kept readers coming back for more, which meant money. And Nathaniel never turned down money. As she read, the familiar words from the note fell into place. She had seen them before. The Fall of the House of Usher. This particular story had something to do with a house…it collapsed at the end, if she remembered correctly, taking with it twin siblings who were the last two living members of their family line. The second paper was an illustration of a one-eyed cat, another story penned by Mr. Poe.
Her thoughts raced. The birds, the feather nailed to her door…in an instant it came to her. “The Raven,” she said, breathless. “There’s a poem by Poe called The Raven.” Even she, someone who never left the house, was familiar not just with the poem, but with how fantastically popular it had become. Fashionable families held dinner parties and read the poem aloud around the fire, students recited it in diction classes, and a number of magazines and newspapers had already run parodies of the spine-tingling composition.
Mr. Stone nodded gravely. “I’ve read it. You said something about candles the other day, as well… I wonder…”
He trailed off, but Sophronia was already scrambling to remember a story or poem by Mr. Poe that included candles. Nothing came to mind.
“Wait here,” she said, thrusting the pages back at Mr. Stone. She ran to Nathaniel’s study, pushing aside the unpleasant memories that it brought, and forcing herself to grab bound copies of the magazines by the armful. When she came back to the parlor, Mr. Stone was just as she left him, one dark brow raised in question.
Laying out the magazines on every surface in the room, Sophronia began to sort through them, separating those that contained stories or poems by Mr. Poe.
“The answers are in here somewhere,” she said, a ray of hope breaking through the clouds of despair that had settled over her in the previous weeks. There was a pattern, a riddle—she only had to crack it and perhaps she could put an end to this.
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