While this old fashioned title is far from unrepresentative in Jaime Jo Wright's bibliography—her work includes titles like The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond, On the Cliffs of Foxglove Manor and The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus—it's highly appropriate for this book, which tackles classic gothic mystery in a fascinating and self-aware manner.

We're in Needle Creek, Wisconsin, at Castle Moreau, built at the tail end of the 18^th-century by a trapper come good, but we're there in multiple times. In 1871, we're there with Daisy, who's found an escape from the abuse of her foster parents, the Greenbergs, in taking care of the place while Ora Tremblay Moreau writes her gothic novels. In the present day, we follow Cleo, who's escaped a trauma of her own, even if she left her sister Riley behind, to tackle Virgie Tremblay's mountains of boxes. And, in 1801, we spend some time with The Girl in the early days of the castle.

Daisy and Cleo are different people from different times who act in very different ways. However, there are clear parallels between them, parallels that only grow as the novel runs on, alternating chapters. Each has a dominant matriarch in the castle. Each has a younger male presence who's a forbidden-fruit romantic angle. Each has a new young lady coming to work at the castle, always an isolated sole inhabitant of the north wing. And each of their stories prominently start with escape though they're caught up in the further stories of girls who have mysteriously vanished in the area or even on the grounds of the castle. Clearly, both Daisy and Cleo are at risk so we have a suspense angle to keep us paying attention.

Of course, each is also immersed in the tropes of the gothic novel. The 1871 chapters have a neatly meta angle to them, with the female force in the castle being a bestselling gothic novelist, author of a succession of scandalously gruesome books, enough to build her quite the reputation in society. I like that Wright is happy to acknowledge that, even while the gothics were being written, people saw the tropes of the genre. That isn't a recent discovery and thankfully isn't treated as one, even as we're introduced to Lincoln Tremblay, there but officially not, possibly because he's confined to a wheelchair, and Festus, a sinister caretaker, who may or may not have a wife.

Wright does an impressive job of telling a similar story in two eras according to the cultural norms of each. Daisy, for all that she's generally treated well, is clearly a servant and there are a host of expectations that apply to that status. Cleo, on the other hand, is an employee and, even running from something, is far more able to speak up for herself. However, she's faced on one side with an elderly hoarder who may be mentally unstable and on the other her rich and handsome jetsetter of a grandson, Deacon Tremblay.

Also, the people of Needle Creek are far more ready to press the castle residents about a growing amount of missing girls over a couple of centuries than their ancestors ever did about the earliest few. Again, a different time means a different response. Poor girls in the Victorian era were two a penny and were seen as disposable. With high mortality rates, human life simply did not have the value back then that it does today. What's more, the present-day residents have no concern about trawling Cleo, the new arrival at the castle, into that long-standing argument.

My only problem with these two setups was that the nature of Virgie's hoarding wasn't defined in a clear manner and the response to it felt problematic. The keep/throw/donate categories seem a little pat, as if they were sourced from a minimalist TV guru. There are definitely indicators of real hoarding going on, with the concerns that go along with that, but I took Virgie's collections as they were minimally described, suggesting that this should never have been a downsizing battle but an organising party. There's too much blind assumption here that stuff equals junk, just because of a particular volume. I wanted to visit Castle Moreau to help Virgie explore her collections.

I liked pretty much everything else, starting with the smooth prose of Jaime Jo Wright. Anyone in fear of a modern gothic, because of how dense some of the originals can be with the 18^th- and 19^th-century penchants for effusive description, should ditch those concerns because they'll find this an easy read. However, there's plenty of depth to it as well, with themes that I've only hinted at and I have no interest in spoiling. What I will say is that I loved how the themes I'm not going to mention play wonderfully with the gothic tropes, skeletons and secret doors and echoingly vast spaces, not to forget the Phantom Woman, who's a constant across three different eras.

There's so much more I want to talk about here but won't because that way lies spoilers, but this is a peach of a choice for a book club discussion. Participants would have to finish the entire book not just make a dent in it, but I'd love to hear that discussion and also contribute to it. I'd love to hear a variety of responses to where the theme goes. The only catch is that I wonder if we should have an acquaintance with Wright's other work first, because with consistent titles like those, I wonder if a set of unrelated titles nonetheless carry a consistent theme. Inquiring minds want to know. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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