My name is Miss Lucinda Meredith.Please, come sit with me a while, let me tell you my story.It was the Summer of 1890.Theatre manager and writer, Mr Bram Stoker, arrived here in Whitby after an arduous theatre tour of Scotland. It was to be a welcome respite before his return to London. What he discovered was far more intriguing.We met at dawn on the East Cliff, in the shadow of Whitby Abbey, on … shadow of Whitby Abbey, on a bench overlooking the sea. So at ease in his company, I felt compelled to share the events that had haunted my existence.
And after all these years, I wonder, could our chance encounter have inspired what would become, Bram Stoker’s legacy?
“Death finds us all, it is our finality. I had ached for death for so long, to rid me of the misery, torment – plague. Yet, when it came, my end only signified a beginning. The creation of something new.”
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“It is a place of horrors, a place of torment, a place of death. Not death of the body, no, those who reside there—”
Set in Whitby, in the summer of 1890, this gothic tale of Lucy and Mr Stoker whisked me away to another time, another place, and wrapped me in it’s timelessness. I sat on the bench by the East Cliff, followed Lucy’s journey as if I was beside her , feeling her loss, her fear, her dread, and her search for forgiveness as she unveiled her story to Bram.
A deeply, beautiful haunting tale I won’t soon forget!
u2063
u2063I read the first sentence…”We met on a Tuesday.” and I thought to myself this really is going to be a haunting gothic tale…u2063 perhaps a love story gone wrong. The descriptive prose certainly had the tempo and feel of Austen and Bronte and so I settled in for an enjoyable read with my cup of tea. Although Mr. Stoker and I is a love story in a sense; it is also much more as I quickly discovered with the turning of every single page. I found that I was rereading many of the passages just because they were so beautifully written.
The story is told through the eyes and thoughts of Lucinda by way of her journal which she gave to Mr. Bram Stoker whom she met one pre sunrise morning while the last dark fingers of the night tried to hang onto the darkness just a bit longer. This is where the story took a turn for me because, embarrassingly, I did not recognize the name… Bram Stoker. This is key.
The characters are well rounded…both real and unreal. The setting was so descriptive that it was easily visualized in my minds eye. But, it’s the story, how it is told and how it unfolds that is its strength.
Blackthorn Manor and the Abby atop the East Cliff overlooking the sea just outside Whitby is the eerie backdrop of the story. I was slowly sucked into the story as Mr. Stoker read the journal, I admit, however, I went willingly. I found I could not stop. I could not put the book down until I finally turned the very last page. I closed the book with a sigh and I wondered…could it be? I encourage you to pick up this book and give it a read. You will wonder, too.
I will leave you this description from the author. It tells it all.
A gothic tale
of desperation, ambition,
morality and mortality
“I urge you to always remember, that the living are living, the dead are dead, and those that linger in-between, those are the noteworthy.”
Mr Stoker & I tells the story of Miss Lucinda Meredith and her chance meeting with Mr Bram Stoker. It was the summer of 1890 and he was visiting Whitby after an arduous theatre tour. They met at dawn on the East Cliff, in the shadow of Whitby Abbey, on a bench overlooking the sea. Miss Lucy had a story to tell and Mr Stoker felt compelled to listen.
I fell into this book, reading Lucy’s diary along with Mr Stoker, thinking I knew where the story was going when perhaps I did not. The writing is beautiful, the style captures the era perfectly. The dreamy quality of Lucy’s diary conveys her confused state of mind and her attempts to understand the events as they unfold. I binge read the second half of the book, unable to put it down, just completely immersed in Lucy’s world. That is what I hope for in a book and Becky Wright certainly delivered. And, again, her writing is gorgeous. This would be an amazing audiobook, the story and the writing beg to be read aloud. A big thank you to the author for sending me a copy of her book for review. Highly recommended!
Highly recommended
Ah, what a wonderful read.
What inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula? This book takes a stab in the dark at it (see what I did there?).
With a foot firmly still in the paranormal, Mr Stoker & I explores the life of Miss Lucy.
A family curse, a chap from the Carpathian Mountains, an asylum and ghosts…what more could you want in a gothic tale?
As a Dracula fan, I was intrigued by this version of the “truth behind the myth”.
An intriguing tale with a unique voice.
Beautifully written, this story has an almost poetic soul.
Calm, not rushed yet detailed. It’s like taking a stroll along the cliffs at sunset, conversing with a friend. But that conversation contains some horror!
Fans of the genre, I recommend this book.
An easy 4.5* from me.
Did Bram Stoker create Dracula purely from his imagination, or did his inspiration come from other means?
It’s a question all lovers of Gothic literature want to know, and in this novel the author manages to convince us that it was very much the latter.
In the summer of 1890, Bram Stoker is in Whitby, resting after a gruelling theatre tour of Scotland. He meets a young woman at dawn, overlooking the East Cliffs. They talk, and the tale she tells him is one that wraps itself around his heart like an ice-cold fist.
This is a beautifully written story, steeped in all the finery of Gothic prose. The author has meticulously researched the time period, and this reads as if it could have been written then.
Beautifully atmospheric, the darkness in this has a sadness that permeates the page.
A unique and haunting read that Mr Stoker would have been proud of!
Friends, if you love eerie gothic fiction and victorian literature, then you don’t want to miss this! Mr Stoker & I fits its time period perfectly and reads just like one of those classics you adore. Becky Wright has taken one of the most loved ones of all time, and asked how it might have been inspired. Loved Dracula? You’ll feel right at home in this dark, emotional tale, where Mr Stoker himself has the important role of unbiased listener to a girl who desperately needs one after all the pain–emotional, psychological, and physical–her own family put her through.
Like in all of Wright’s novels, family plays a huge part, and like all of her books, it’s horror but without being outright horrifying–so if, like me, you can’t take much, you don’t need to worry about this book giving you nightmares. It’s just the right levels of disturbing and dark 😉
Fans of haunting gothic victorian fiction will love this chilling read!