I do enjoy a novel that involves an entirely unfamiliar premise. Something set in our world but with a premise that could exist here. There’s something very bold about the way that Sue Rainsford structures her story so that the reader is never quite sure where we are. Is this another world entirely? A version of our world that could have been? Or some unknown corner where magic might still exist?
Ada and her father are healers of a sort. They live on the edge of a village where they help “cures”, as they call the people around them. People come to them to be relieved of illness and physical ailment and Ada and her father sing them to sleep, open them up, and heal them. If the healing needs a little longer they might bury them for a time in the fertile ground outside their house. Ada calls the people who come to them “cures” and she views them with curiosity and some disdain. She looks young but is older than many of them, her and her father living for much longer than the cures do. Ada’s father pulled her from the ground, after several other tries that didn’t work out.
Ada is a young woman but also definitely not and she holds herself apart from the cures until she meets Samson. They become involved, a sort of entanglement that is strange and impossible. Both Ada’s father and Samson’s widowed, pregnant sister disapprove. And there are whispers that any man interested in someone like Ada must have something wrong with him.
This book is slim and focused. We are introduced to Ada and her father and to their abilities. We see the power they have to heal and we witness how they use that power. Rainsford maps out for us their role in this community – part of but definitely separate. So it’s easy to see how Ada and Samson’s relationship disrupts this balance. I really liked that beyond an explanation of their capabilities, there was no attempt made to provide a larger context for Ada and her father. They existed. They had, in some capacity, always existed. It made them feel like some sort of ancient, mystic beings that part of me wants to believe maybe do dwell in some dark corner of the world. (Samson drives a truck so we’re at least somewhere in the 20th or 21st century but the whole book feels very separate from modern life.)
I really enjoyed this and I thought it did well with the tight focus over a relatively short amount of time. It was creepy without being outright scary and it was all around a very creative work of fiction.
Karissa Reads Books 
This book sounds spookier than what I’m used to reading about on your blog, but I see from the photo you requested it specifically and did not stumble upon it at the library.
It had been on my TBR for a while. I’m sure I read a review of it somewhere but I don’t recall where. It was fairytale spooky, not horror spooky, if that makes sense. The characters were weird and off-putting but their actions were meant to help others and people sought them out. So I wouldn’t say it was horror or particularly scary. Just weird and a bit uncomfortable!
I read a lot of books in that very category, but because I’m me and love horror, I think you all are more cautious about picking up my recommendations!
Have you read this one? I am cautious about picking up other people’s horror-type recommendations, even when they sound intriguing. I don’t know that I loved this book but it wasn’t scary.
I have not read this one, but I have read an awful lot of books that are advertised as horror that are not scary at all. Some of them don’t include violence or anything. There might be a spooky sound, but I’d wager that the average adult could handle that. A lot of times, these books that are marketed as horror are just metaphors for other things and aren’t scary at all. If anything, it’s more like a character falling into ongoing psychological issues, which I would call a thriller.
Yes, this one really isn’t a horror or even a thriller. It’s just a weird story about people/beings with strange powers. It does feel more like a metaphor for something than a straight up horror story.
I think I’d really enjoy this one – love the spooky element! And I know you what you mean about enjoying stories are that set outside of world, but not too far outside it? And the fact that the author doesn’t feel the need to explain everything? This is how i felt about Heather O’Neill’s The Capital of Dreams.
I think you’d like it too. It has a fairytale quality to it (like Grimm or Anderson, not Disney!) and the comparison to Capital of Dreams is a good one.