A workaholic teacher and a cranky blacksmith investigate a haunted orphanage in the remote Scottish Borders. What they find together might help them heal the wounds of their pasts… if they survive. When the charity Leon works for inherits the orphanage, he travels north to see if the site is suitable for a new school. But Vainguard is a place of dark secrets, and Leon unearths a mystery about … mystery about four children who died there in 1944—a tragic tale with an uncanny connection to the death of Leon’s parents.
Still bitter and guilt-ridden over his daughter’s death, farrier Niall joins Leon in uncovering Vainguard’s cruel history, including not just abuse but a tale about a vengeful spirit preying on local children. As the orphanage’s disturbing past comes to light, another child goes missing.
Niall and Leon know they don’t have long before the child falls victim to a legend straight from the Borders’ blood-soaked past.
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“By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.” ~ William Shakespeare’s Macbeth
There’s little I love more—at least when it comes to reading—than a good ghost story. The things that go bump in the night, the soughing of the wind on a dark and stormy evening, shadows that the light can never quite penetrate, a phantom stirring caught out of the corner of one’s eye. Amy Rae Durreson’s Something Wicked This Way Comes encompasses each of those requisite traits of the horror genre, and then some, but it isn’t just a good ghost story. It’s an excellent one.
Set in a village on the border between Scotland and England, Durreson uses the landscape and the legend of the area to great effect, adding in her own touches to deliver what will become a chilling story of child abuse and murder. The curse upon Vainguard, a gothic monstrosity set on the English side of the border, dates back decades, but the area’s history, intermingled with Scotland’s, goes back centuries. The year is 1944, innocence is lost—to misfortune, to the war, and at the hands of the wicked—a malevolent spirit is summoned and unleashed, and that evil will go on to wreak havoc upon children in the quiet countryside for decades to follow. It is a wickedness that feeds on the blood of innocents, and Leon Kwarteng might have become a victim of that malevolence were it not for the efforts of strangers who’d had a hand in its resurrection. As it was, however, Leon was orphaned at the age of six, and that single turning point in his life would go on to shape the man he would become.
Leon’s journey to Blacklynefoot wasn’t one of choice but of duty to his job as a teacher at Eilbeck House, a school for disadvantaged and at-risk youth. Becky’s Children’s Trust has unexpectedly inherited Vainguard and so his adoptive father, Felix, sends Leon on a mission to scout the location for a potential, and badly needed, new school. Durreson doesn’t rely on this as a convenient mode to deliver Leon into danger, though. Leon was being managed by a stranger, unbeknownst to him, and his arrival in Blacklynefoot is a direct link to a past he barely recalls, an apprehension of the events that killed his parents and which left him alone and afraid, and it ends up tying into his meeting Niall Forster—a man whose own brush with the evil that lurks will tie him to Leon in unexpected, but ultimately fortunate, ways.
Niall losing his daughter in an automobile accident makes him imminently sympathetic in spite of his tendency towards surliness, if not outright hostility at times. His and Leon’s first meeting was an inauspicious one, at best, but time and their finding a common bond—albeit it a painful one—and then forging a friendship through that bond became key to everything that lay ahead of them. As they become more deeply entrenched in revealing and destroying the spirit that means to feed upon a young visitor, the investigation uncovers the deeds of human monsters too. And while Niall has brought Leon back from the brink of emotional breakdown on a number of occasions, it’s Leon who must rescue Niall from a timeless veil that exists between life and death.
A message of hope in the midst of sorrow, and forgiveness in the midst of wicked deeds and gross misfortune, prevails among the love of family, the commitment of friends and strangers alike, and the connection that grows between Leon and Niall. There’s a lovely romance in this story that finds its own way amidst the trauma and turmoil of the horror, and the author conducts each chapter and verse of Something Wicked This Way Comes with the skill needed to integrate it all into a fantastic and entertaining read. This novel is, by turns, eerie and haunting, touched by pathos and uplifted by a solidarity of purpose, and delivers an awesome scare or three along the way. Fans of the genre will appreciate the goose bumps in these pages.
*review of self-published 2nd edition
https://optimumm.blog/2019/11/13/review-of-something-wicked-this-way-comes-by-amy-rae-durreson/
Leon is a teacher who helps children with special needs. When his charity, sends him to the Scottish border to evaluate the orphanage they inherited, Leon is welcome by a broody blacksmith, Niall Forster. The old building is more than what Leon expected. A lot of dramas have been done there—a lot of children had been hurt. When another child disappears, Leon and Niall know that something wicked may come to them, but they don’t know how to defeat it.
Something Wicked this way comes by Amy Rae Durreson, gave me the creeps. This book is what I expected—a scary novel with a good mystery.
Leon was an orphan. He lost his family when he was a little child, and after being moved from foster family to foster family, Leon was rescued by Becky’s, a charity that helps children with special needs, and gave them a second chance. Leon was then adopted by Felix and Valerie and became a teacher for Becky. He doesn’t have a lover or a life. When Felix sends him to the Scottish border to evaluate Vainguard, the orphanage, Leon realized he knew this place, and something terrible happened to him there.
Niall is a blacksmith. He’s grieving the loss of his daughter, Katie, who died a year ago in a terrible car accident. Niall is broody and rough, and he doesn’t like strangers either, but Leon touches him and awakes something inside him. When another child disappears, Niall must fight hard against his demons and pain.
Leon and Niall will not only try to save the missing child, but also each other.
I adored them. They were fabulous, sensitive, smart, and funny. Niall is broken by the loss of his daughter, but he tried to survive her, and meeting Leon is probably what Niall needs the most in his lonely life. Leon is a workaholic; he doesn’t have a life, and he feels indebted to Felix. Being at the Scottish border, far away from his family and his job, Leon will have to face his past and fears, but most of all, he will have to fight hard for Niall, and to have the life he really wants.
The plot is about what’s been happening to the children in the village since 1944 and how Leon and Niall are linked to it. The author has created a heavy and suffocating atmosphere. Vainguard, the orphanage, is a character by itself and it was brilliantly written. I was hooked by the story from the beginning. It gave me the creeps I won’t lie, and sometimes I had the feeling of hearing the voice too (no I’m not crazy). The ending was awesome. I didn’t see it coming, not all of it, at least. I adored this book; it was the perfect book to read for the Halloween season.
5 Stars for the teacher and his blacksmith