Ingrid and her daughter Susan return to the Western Highlands of Scotland, staying at Strathbairn with Gertrude McCleod while their new home, a cottage by the loch, is redecorated. The very same day, the ghosts of Ingrid’s past return when Gertrude’s brother Miles arrives with his new bride and his friend Timothy.
When her former beau turned betrayer Hamish starts work on a barn conversion, Ingrid is desperate to leave Strathbairn. She rushes to move into the cottage only to find she is sharing her new home
with a violent ghost.
Realising the haunting is somehow connected to Strathbairn and sensing that something at Willows Cottage must be returned, she makes every effort to discover what that it is.
While Hamish and Gertrude conspire to force Ingrid into marriage, Timothy becomes a regular caller with a romantic motive. With two suitors and two marriage proposals, who will she choose – and can
she solve the haunting of Willows Cottage?
A gripping conclusion to a classic gothic mystery trilogy laced with dark family secrets.
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Isobel Blackthorn is an award-winning author of immersive and inspiring fiction. She has penned over twenty-five books including a number of bestsellers. She majors in strong female leads and
empowerment narratives.
Among her credits, Isobel’s biographical short story ‘Nothing to Declare’, which forms the first chapter of her biographical novel Emma’s Tapestry, was shortlisted for the Ada Cambridge Prose Prize 2019. One of her Canary Islands novels, A Prison in the Sun, was shortlisted in the LGBTQ
category of the Readers’ Favorite Book Awards 2020 and the International Book Awards 2021. The Cabin Sessions was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award 2018 and the Ditmar Awards 2018.
And The Unlikely Occultist: A biographical novel of Alice A. Bailey received an Honorable Mention in the 2021 Reader’s Favorite Book Awards.
Blackthorn is the author of the world’s only biography of Theosophist and mother of the New Age movement Alice Bailey – Alice A. Bailey: Life & Legacy.
Isobel has a background in Western Esotericism. She holds 1st Class Honours in Social Studies, and a PhD from the University of Western Sydney for her ground-breaking research on the works of Alice A. Bailey. Her doctoral thesis has been downloaded over 13,000 times.
Isobel’s first work, which she wrote in 2008, is Voltaire’s Garden. This memoir is set in the mid 2000s and tells the story of building a sustainable lifestyle B&B in Cobargo on the south coast of New South
Wales, Australia, which gained international attention when a firestorm razed the idyllic historic village on New Year’s Eve 2019.
Isobel’s writing has appeared in journals and websites around the world, including Esoteric Quarterly, New Dawn Magazine, Paranoia, Mused Literary Review, Trip Fiction, Backhand Stories, Fictive Dream and On Line Opinion. Isobel was a judge for the Australasian Shadow Awards 2020
long fiction category. Her book reviews have appeared in New Dawn Magazine, Esoteric Quarterly, Shiny New Books, Sisters in Crime, Australian Women Writers, Trip Fiction and Newtown Review of Books.
Isobel’s interests are many and varied. She has a long-standing association with the Canary Islands, having lived in Lanzarote in the late 1980s. A humanitarian and campaigner for social justice, in 1999
Isobel founded the internationally acclaimed Ghana Link, uniting two high schools, one a relatively privileged state school located in the heart of England, the other a materially impoverished school in
a remote part of the Upper Volta region of Ghana, West Africa. After working as a teacher, market trader and PA to a literary agent, she arrived at writing in her forties, and her stories are as diverse and intriguing as her life has been.
Isobel has performed her literary works at events in a range of settings and given workshops in creative writing.
British by birth, Isobel entered this world in Farnborough, Kent, UK. She has lived in England, Australia, Spain and the Canary Islands. She now lives and writes in Spain. She is currently at work on two novels composed in Spanish.
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My thoughts: Despite her experiences at Strathbairn previously, Ingrid returns there, hoping to soon be able to move into the cottage she inherited with her daughter Susan, and build a life in this quiet place.
Unfortunately it isn’t that easy, there’s a lot of work needing doing before the cottage is liveable and while the assistance of two kind and generous neighbours helps, she has to remain at Strathbairn, now a guesthouse, until it’s ready.
She finds it almost unbearable, more so when first Miles, and then Hamish, appear, neither of them men she wishes to have anything to do with. Miles’ friend Timothy, she at first is pleased to see, but she finds his behaviour confusing and as she learns more about him, she becomes less keen.
Daughter Susan continues her attachment to the cook at Strathbairn, refusing to do as her mother wishes and move to Willows Cottage. For some reason I thought of her as very young, but she is eleven, although she acts like she’s about six. Ingrid has struggled with her since her husband died, but with the help of her excellent new neighbour she might finally win her child over.
Finally there is the problem of a violent and aggressive presence in the cottage – hoping she’s left ghosts behind in Strathbairn, Ingrid finds one in her new home. What do they want and why are they so angry? A trip to Skye with Timothy gives her a potential clue, can Ingrid alleviate the ghost’s rage by repairing an old wrong?
Ingrid has dealt with unpleasant men and ghostly violence in every volume of this trilogy, and it’s often all because of the same people – the awful McCleod family, both living and dead. I don’t really know why she’s so keen to live near them, I’d sell the cottage and land and stay far away, it might be easier, but I suppose she’s made of sterner stuff.
There’s pleasing conclusions to some of Ingrid’s troubles, and a gruesome end to one unpleasant character too, as Ingrid attempts to build her new life and finally makes friends with some actual nice people, it looks like she might just achieve it.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 