Acquired Book By: I am a regular tour hostess for blog tours via Cedar Fort whereupon I am thankful to have such a diverse amount of novels and non-fiction titles to choose amongst to host. I received a complimentary copy of “The Haunting of Springett Hall” direct from the publisher Sweetwater Books (imprint of Cedar Fort, Inc) in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Why I love a wicked good ghost story:
#HistoricalFix in October had a wicked good topic of discussion as it was centered around paranormal historical fiction, ghost stories and our genuine love of the cosier side of horror! I felt honoured I was able to attend this quarterly chat for a conversation which truly excited me beyond what words could express! In attendance were Katherine Howe, Cat Winters and Lynn Carthage (the latter of whom I interviewed when her debut novel Haunted was released!). Curiously, I ended up walking away with a copy of Haunted at the end of the evening, as the author appreciated the fact my favourite childhood toy was my Gloworm of whom was my reading companion as a child!
During the conversation, as with previous #HistoricalFix’s the tweets are lightning quick, the chatter blissfully addictive, I started to notice that I am not the only one who is bemused by ghost stories! In fact, what did surprise me is how many of us appreciate the lighter side of the genre vs the horror-esque style of modern ghost stories! Not every contemporary author writes the horror into a ghost story, but imagine my jolly surprise in finding there were other writers and readers out there who liked the same versions I did!
I happily mentioned The Haunting of Springett Hall and I believe I remembered to mention my readings of Edith Wharton’s Ghost Stories from Halloween 2014, as they became singularly memorable due to how Wharton wrote the ghosts inside her tales! I have been wanting to read more ghost stories and more PNR in particular, however, the hours slip past me in the hourglass, and another year has come and gone! Imagine!? I am hopeful by October 2016, I will have lots of lovelies to talk about inside this suspenseful genre as I do get a heap of happiness out of reading about ghosts!
Mind you, I’m a bit more scared to admit The Barter is keeping my imagination on high alert as it’s a ghost story unlike any other I’ve attempted to read! This was a curious suggestion of a book to read for Halloween and I must say, I’m still working my way through it! It’s so chillingly haunting and quite fetchingly edgy, it’s remarkable how the author managed to keep the tone introspective as her character is trying to ‘think her way’ out of the horror of keeping company with a ghost!
The beauty for me is finding stories like The Haunting of Springett Hall as I had a feeling even before I picked it up to read, this might become a seasonal favourite to re-visit due to how Wheeler pulled her story together and gave me such a wicked sweet read! Gentle spirits, innocent ghosts, expansive estates and the historical past – what is not to love about soaking inside this kind of a world where a girl realises she’s a ghost but forgets how that’s possible?
Notation on the Cover Art: Quite happily, when I first soaked inside the first chapter, the image on the cover art started to percolate inside my mind’s eye as the young girl whose become the ghost of the hour is quite aptly described as the same ghost featured on the cover! So much so, you can almost feel her discomfort of wandering around an old Victorian estate home without so much as a clue as to why she’s there and what could possibly have caused this new ‘state’ of her life.
The Haunting of Springett Hall
by E.B. Wheeler
Source: Direct from Publisher
I gasped and jerked my hand back, staring at it. Through it, really. Even when I covered my eyes, I could see the furniture on the other side of the room: a grandfather clock with its hands stopped, a mahogany side table and sofa, and a portrait draped in black.
Someone had died.
I turned my translucent hand back and forth. Yes. Someone had.
Eighteen-year-old Lucy can't remember how she became a ghost, but the more she discovers about her past, the more she wants to forget. With the help of a servant named Philip, the only living person who can see her, Lucy must find a way to erase the mistakes of her former life before it's too late.
This haunting romantic mystery takes you back in time to Victorian England. Filled with suspenseful scenes and thrilling twists - it's an impossible romance you won't be able to put down.
Places to find the book:
Published by Sweetwater Books
on 14th July, 2015
Format: Paperback Edition
Pages: 256
Published By: Sweetwater Books (@SweetwaterBooks),
an imprint of Cedar Fort, Inc (@CedarFortBooks)
Available Formats: Paperback, Ebook
Converse via: #HauntingOfSpringettHall, #ghoststory, #paranormal,
About E.B. Wheeler
E.B. Wheeler grew up in Georgia and California, where she became fascinated by stories of the places around her. She studied English and history at Brigham Young University and earned an MA and MLA from Utah State University.
After several years teaching and writing about history, she decided to pursue her other dream of writing fiction. “The Haunting of Springett Hall” is her first novel. She currently lives in northern Utah with her husband, daughters, various pets, and a garden full of antique roses.
Evocations of the Victorian age:
Gaslights cast shadows of light and a labyrinth estate home is the setting for Wheeler’s unsuspecting ghost story – where we are treated to not one ghost, but a succession of ghosts of whom are tied directly to Springett Hall! It’s nearly as though there is a pallor of death lingering over the home for a reason completely unknown to both reader and ghosts alike! I liked how the rambling estate itself is center-stage and brought to the foreground of where the ghost ambles around whilst seeking out any information to aide her in her quest for understanding.
It’s the type of place where the long tapestries, posed paintings of deceased heirs, and the chill of drafty corridors leading from one level to the level can be spied with familiarity and ease. The upstairs and downstairs interact as you had turnt on an episode of Downton Abbey whilst the pulse of the suspenseful bits are drawn out – no rush to circumvent the mystery nor to disclose the hows or whys of what is happening at Springett Hall. You’re left to wander about the place as eager to dig inside it’s mysterious past and unearth what secrets are keeping it so quiet with a twinge of horror.
The Victorians were keenly rapt to superstitious inclinations, and Wheeler brings this full circle by having her ghost(s) more than a small bit afraid of each other! Their mannerisms and reactions are quite era appropriate grounding the timescape firmly into place.
My Review of The Haunting of Springett Hall:
Wheeler wrote a beginning to a ghost story where you are immediately sympathetic to the ghost! For who knew once you cross into that threshold you could lose your memory? To be completely remiss in who you were prior to this new state of yours, existing behind the veil where the rest of the world is living without a clue as to why your still wandering and not resting?
As we start to entreat into her world, the most waxing of peculiarities is the edging of darkness round the corners of this tale; all is not well at Springett Hall, as clearly there is more happening there than a misplaced ghost! Wheeler gives you such a delish set-up to enveloping us into the plight of her young ghost, we nearly do not take stock or notice of what is happening just out of our view as a reader. There is this foreboding sense Springett Hall has it’s fair share of secrets; secrets which do not want to become circumspect and examined.
It’s not all folly and mirth being a ghost – even when you have your wits about you, the only constant of your presence is the will to remember anything about your life which might draw out a glimpse of hope to understand what could be your new point of focus. For our young ghost, it’s the full absence of recognition with only the smallest fraction of familiarity amongst those who are present at Springett Hall to aide her recovery from the shock of finding her hands and body are translucent! Wheeler gave our ghost a bit of innocence and a bit of self-directing sleuthing to sort out the entanglements of her afterlife. For each step she makes towards a clue of what she has yet to remember, we find her limitations as a ghost are quite frustrating; especially when night cast a die of ink and erases her independence to remain as she is until the dawn. There is this point of time where she is neither present nor absent; she’s merely ‘not there’. A confusion for her and a wick of intrigue for the reader – what is causing this lapse of awareness? And, why is there a dark omnipresence clouding over Springett Hall?
Towards the middle of Chapter Three, we are introduced to ‘Lucy’ as her spur of the moment conversation with Mr Ketley proved two points: she does remember her name when prompted to speak it aloud and someone else at Springett Hall is as bemused of his circumstances as she is of her undead state! I found it quite champion to come across this inclusion at this particular point in the story, as prior to then, Lucy was drawing closer to the truth of what is haunting the estate but without any tangible notion as to why she can sense the dangers and others can only hope to accept it’s not their imaginations!
There is a darker turning point to The Haunting of Springett Hall where everyone within the walls of this estate are being affected by the dark sins of the Baronet who fancied himself a bit of a dark magic wielder of destiny. He couldn’t let go of the dark arts nor could he fully grasp what dabbling in them would do once he was dead and gone himself. Both Lucy and her newly found friend Ketley are attempting to the pieces back together from this drawn out mystery surrounding what could effect the living and the dead in equal terror and horror. Other residents of the estate are showing signs of the hauntings, as there are more ghosts freely wandering the grounds than Lucy could have fathomed to be possible.
Each time she starts to remember a bit more of the evolving puzzle, the more she fears where the truth might align against her hopes of a past she could handle accepting as her own. What makes the reading of this tale chilling is how ominous the tone is kept threaded through the chapters; you can only speculate towards what is forestalling Lucy’s quest. Even untoward how she is fated together with Ketley to a present that neither one can exactly remember the events which led them to this point in time. Due to their closeness together in sleuthing the truth out from what is left behind, a bit of a paranormal romance starts to come together for them. A man might draw breath and a ghost might draw nothing more than air but the two spirits within each of them are dearly attracted to each other.
This novel consumes you as you read it; you must read it in one sitting because to distance yourself from the story-line is a bit too much time to wait to know the ending! After I finished the story, the metaphor and the meaning behind what happens to Lucy and Ketley became a bit clearer as there is a lesson in choices and choosing a path a bit more wisely than the one these two knuckleheads did at Springett Hall. I’m referencing to their rash and impulsive selves prior to our meeting of them wherein they made definitive choices regarding their souls and the lives they led.
There was only one portion of the story towards the ending chapters where I felt a bit taken out of the story; mostly because the story had to make a transition into the resolution. I don’t want to spoilt it for my readers, but for me personally, there was such a lot of attention placed on the back-stories and on the relationship budding between Lucy and Ketley, that the ending felt as if it might have been a bit rushed to put together. Not in how this novel ends, as I think Wheeler championed the spirit of her characters by how it draws to a close but rather, in the scenes and sequences leading up to the ending. She had me convinced with the ending resolution but part of what leads up to it (i.e. the sleepwalking servants and the excess of rats) weren’t as enjoyable for me within the whole.
How Wheeler adds a bit of Cosy Horror to Springett Hall:
I admit, when I first soaked inside #HauntingOfSpringettHall, I was not certain if this was going to be told in the tradition of Victorian ghost stories (similar to Wharton’s approach) or if she might entertain a bit of darker elements to round out the cosier bits with the horrific. She started to encroach on the psychological mind traps of her characters to entertain notions of both sanity and insanity based on what they felt they were observing or taking as solemn truth during the bits of time where no one was the wiser about the truer scope of this suspense etching around Springett Hall.
Whilst Lucy pairs together with Ketley, we start to uncover the darker more sinister underbits to this story; as lurking out of sight is this taut and dearly dark notion of something quite nefariously wicked is shaping together for everyone attached at Springett Hall. I felt Wheeler championed the dark horror of the unknown with the finesse of attracting readers such as I who appreciate horror on a lighter level of spooktacular dimension! The worst bits of this kind of horror is what you can imagine being true rather than knowing what is true; this is the key reason I love Hitchcock so dearly much, because it’s not what is shockingly visual in front of you but rather, how your interpreting the ‘other bits’ just out of sight.
The creature she created for Springett Hall was definitely rooted in legend and lore with it’s own unique twist to be connected to this story in particular because Wheeler grounded it’s attributes to be based on the character it inhabits. I enjoyed seeing her take this spin on the creature as it gave a segue for discussion after the novel is read, especially by young adults and other readers who might want to broach this with a book club. On that second note, there is a heap to discuss about morality, pride and obsession, the dark arts, and the balance between choosing what is right and what will preserve your own will to survive. The undercurrent of the novel truly roots out strong messages about humanity and one man’s ill pursuit for immortality.
On the writing style of E.B. Wheeler:
Quite cleverly Wheeler allowed us a bit of a vacuum space between our knowledge of the ghost’s name and the realisation that someone else was left without explanation of their surroundings! Cheekily I fancied how she presented the case for Ketley and Lucy to join forces whilst sorting out what became of their fates. It was quite a lovely turn of events, as preceding this interaction, Lucy was befit only to roam and hope for a flickerment of recognition amongst the staff and the estate itself.
There is a creature and shapeshifting surprise within the pages, one that I hadn’t quite expected until I put the small clues together where Wheeler once again excelled at letting the reader stay a bit out of step with the twists she wanted to include! I believe she handled the Horror with the Psychological quite well as the narrative shifts back and forth between both thematic elements quite nicely. Your keen to know what is happening but it’s how she chose to tell the deepening horrific bits that gave me the most delight in realising I could handle them!
This Blog Tour Stop is courtesy of Cedar Fort, Inc.:
Visit the Virtual Road Map of “The Haunting of Springett Hall” Blog Tour:
This review was meant to post in July, however due to extreme lightning storms, I was unable to post my review on the tour. I had to postpone this review until November due to the after effects of severe lightning storms in July and August led to a full month of September to fix the damages. The lightning unfortunately nearly destroyed my equipment and getting back to my blog took quite a bit longer than I originally felt it might. I regret I wasn’t able to post this sooner than now, however, I am thankful I can finally share my thoughts with both the publisher and the author; inasmuch as my readers.
Revisit the stories I read via Cedar Fort in 2015!
Visit with me again soon!
Reader Interactive Question:
What do you find the most charming about reading ghost stories? What kind of ghost story truly grabs a hold of your heart and makes you return for more inside this paranormal slice of fiction?
{SOURCES: Author photograph, Author Biography, Book Synopsis and Book Cover of “The Haunting of Springett Hall”, blog tour badge and Cedar Fort badge were provided by Cedar Fort Publishing & Media and used with permission. Ruminations & Impressions Book Review Banner created by Jorie in Canva. Photo Credit: Unsplash Public Domain Photographer Sergey Zolkin. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Tweets were embedded due to codes provided by Twitter.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2015.
I’m a social reader | I tweet as I read:
.@EB_Wheeler Your #coverart of #HauntingOfSpringettHall is wicked awesome whilst complimenting the synopsis! *Cheers https://t.co/zNgTyF2o5p
— Jorie Loves A Story (@joriestory) June 12, 2015
.@jamierobynwood Ooh! #HauntingOfSpringettHall – awaiting mine (reviewing) itching to read #debutnovel @EB_Wheeler! https://t.co/3YCwy9MI8u
— Jorie Loves A Story (@joriestory) June 30, 2015
.@RebeccaNeely1 You, too! I'm going to be soaking inside #HauntingOfSpringettHall; this Victorian #ghoststory calling me into it's folds! :)
— Jorie Loves A Story (@joriestory) July 21, 2015
Note: in the weeks leading up to Halloween, I changed my Twitter to reflect not Jorie Loves A Story but rather: SpooktasticallyJorie out of my passion for ‘ghost stories’ and ‘Cosy Horror’! My small way of celebrating Halloween whilst I tweet!
@HistoricalFix I'm reading The Haunting of Springett Hall – Victorian era & the ghost reads well as if she's dead w/o knowing #HistoricalFix
— Jorie Loves A Story (@joriestory) October 21, 2015
#amreading The Haunting of Springett Hall by @EB_Wheeler whilst spending extended week happily enjoying my #HalloweenReads! #ghoststory :)
— Jorie Loves A Story (@joriestory) November 4, 2015
A lovely convo with Ms Selah Janel about the novel:
@joriestory sounds lovely – who's it by, Jorie?
— Selah Janel (@SelahJanel) November 5, 2015
@SelahJanel Ms @EB_Wheeler wrote it! :) I'm enjoying the #mystery of why the ghost has lost her memory; it's lovely! https://t.co/7PpY6asS5l
— Jorie Loves A Story (@joriestory) November 5, 2015
@SelahJanel Also, there is a bit of a foreboding of darker tones alighting around the edges of the story; most delish to read :) @EB_Wheeler
— SpooktasticallyJorie (@joriestory) November 5, 2015
Very much, so! :) love the slow arch into the heart of it's center; still in the beginning but ooh! what delight :) @SelahJanel @EB_Wheeler
— Jorie Loves A Story (@joriestory) November 5, 2015
More of my tweets shared as I read the novel:
Ooh how lovely! The ghost w/in #HauntingOfSpringettHall has remembered her name! I #amreading @EB_Wheeler's debut #ghoststory w/ delight! :)
— Jorie Loves A Story (@joriestory) November 6, 2015
Honestly say I cannot pull my eyes away from @EB_Wheeler's #CosyHorror novel #HauntingOfSpringettHall! This #ghoststory has wicked suspense!
— Jorie Loves A Story (@joriestory) November 6, 2015
I'm on pins: close to #amreading ending of #HauntingOfSpringettHall; dare I want to exit this #ghoststory? so delish to read! :) #CosyHorror
— Jorie Loves A Story (@joriestory) November 7, 2015
Devoured #HauntingOfSpringettHall; @EB_Wheeler stitched a #ghoststory w/wicked twists https://t.co/5Ob2sc7p24 #PNR pic.twitter.com/FwagQzaR9n
— Jorie Loves A Story (@joriestory) November 7, 2015
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- 2015 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge
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