Synopsis
A gothic tale in two timelines in which the lives of two women intersect through a series of mysterious, eerily beautiful photographs of the dead
London, 1865. Minnie has been sent to Culpepper House to work as a maid. She’s been told that the Culpepper twins are odd, and odd they are. Edmund and Edith seem to do as they please, with Edmund running a laboratory from the house and Edith running about with glass plates in order to create photographs. When Minnie spies what Edith is photographing—a young woman and swan, both dead—she is horrified. But with nowhere else to go, there is nothing to do but remain and try to unlock the mystery of Culpepper House’s secrets before she becomes the victim of such a photograph.
London, present day. When Sydney-based artist Hadley is involved in an art world scandal revolving around an album of exquisite Victorian death photographs, she’s met with a flurry of media attention and the offer to create an installation centering on a heartbreaking image of a young woman and a swan. Then comes a shocking offer from the enigmatic Kit Culpepper of the Culpepper Trust…an eye-watering sum of money, with the condition that Hadley sell him the album and never speak of its contents again. As Hadley digs deeper, she begins to suspect Kit Culpepper is guarding a deathly secret…and she’s not entirely sure how far he’ll go to keep it.
Review
Huge thanks to Berkley for the physical ARC. I like every cover for this one!
A dual timeline. One, a Victorian live-in maid; the other, a twenty-something trying to right her life and swallow her grief. Minnie takes employment at the Culpepper home, where she is to help Edith with her needs, but also to come out of her shell of grief. She and her twin brother, Edmund, live strange lives, and something quite startling happens early on in the employment that makes her unsure how to continue. She perseveres for the sake of her own twin, who is sickly, feeling almost a sort of twisted kinship between them. Hadley, the present-day grieving artist, has recently come into possession of a photo album that links back to the Culpeppers in Victorian times. Previously owned by her recently deceased dear friend, the album holds a truly special place in her heart, not just for its tie to her friend, but also for the beauty of the photographs. Through these death-memorial photos, Hadley is thrown into a wild set of weeks as her life upturns when Kit Culpepper, a descendant with great buying power and influence, tries to purchase the album from her. As the timelines seem to mirror, shift, and distance themselves from each other, not everything is as it seems.
What to say about this one? Rushby has completely surprised me yet again. Slashed Beauties was a 5/5 and a top read for me last year (you can read about it here), and here we are again with this. AHBD is completely different from SB, and yet the writing feels borne from the same place. There is something so magnetic, so hypnotic, so masterful about the prose the author creates that the novels feel like drastically different pieces from one singular universe. I couldn’t put either down. And that’s saying a lot, as I am a notoriously slow reader. This story is harder to place in terms of genre—is it horror, thriller, romance, all of the above?—though no less gripping. I think the dual timeline and the shadow of mystery, the gothic layer, made it so I was expecting a dark turn every step of the way. And trust me, it is dark. It’s just not without light. Hadley lives in the real world, and that does come with loss, grief, and disappointment, but there is also hope, surprise, maybe even love. I’m usually not one for romances (and I’m not sure how to say this calmly), but I was thinking the whole time, “if these m*therf**kers don’t get together, I’m going to lose it.” And that, to me, is totally a testament to the author’s writing ability.
The author seems very particular about characters in the best way. They may not always make decisions you understand or agree with, but they have all the making and layers of real humans. There’s really not a single throwaway with the writing, and the main characters shine. Minnie is unsure of her place in Culpepper House, though never unsure of herself or her morality. Edith and Edmund both navigate a world that was not ready for their gayness, especially when their family business and money would make them targets. Edith, who survived the illness that took their parents and sister, has trouble hearing and speaking, and feels embarrassed to do so. Edmund works tirelessly to perfect new medicines that actually help people, rather than the previous “cure-all.” Hadley is following in the footsteps of her artist mother, though unsure how to highlight her own talents away from that. Even Kit Culpepper is balanced on the edge of a knife, maintaining when and if he shows that he’s more than just the family power and wallet, especially when some of those funds may come from places less than above board. This is all a balancing act that I feel I struggle with as a writer myself, as well as see in so many other stories. The characters don’t just exist to move the plot, and that’s a special talent.
The plot itself is filled with twists, turns, and deception. From ulterior motives, theft, chips on shoulders, and assumed wrongs, there’s not a single person uninvolved. For a good while, I really didn’t know who to suspect, and even if you guess wrong, there’s a good chance the one you thought of isn’t wholly innocent either! And all through this, there’s this romantic subplot, this sense of inevitability between Hadley and Kit. And I love that the author didn’t make this neat and easy, didn’t make it the main plot point, didn’t leave it as something that simply happens. Their attraction is another layer, another thing to have held against them, and that elevates it from simply romance to … whatever this is. I’m still not sure how to classify it, but it’s a truly splendid read.
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