⭐️⭐️⭐️ I was expecting more of a gothic horror feel and I wound up with something more out in left field by the end. It took me a little bit to get into the book as it started with a woman who was looking for a partner to better her situation both financially and professionally but not on an intimate level. As the story progresses you start to get a horror feel and by then end it just seemed to spiral. I was a huge fan of the authors last book so I was expecting something similar in story telling but this wasn’t it. I was provided an advanced copy in exchange for my review.

My Highly Caffeinated Thought: A dark atmospheric gothic horror tale filled with otherworldly influences and chilling truths uncovered.


THE DEATH OF JANE LAWRENCE is a haunting tale of love and pain. Starling weaves together a perfectly suspenseful narrative as she brings the reader down the rabbit hole with Jane.


What I love about this book is how it manages to be so many things within one story. At its core, it is about love and loss. Yet, the elements of the setting and the time period ground the reader within history. And still, the twists are thrown in with the occult, and ghosts enhance the fantasy. The author doesn’t bind herself within one genre. She explores the plot and how the characters develop organically no matter what path it leads her down. This is the beauty of this novel. It grabs you with the promise of chills but gives you so much more.


This darkly told tale will bring you into Jane’s carefully constructed world and allow the reader to explore and learn right along with her. The layers peeled back to uncover the truths within her situation will shock, disturb, and captivate. THE DEATH OF JANE LAWRENCE is a brilliant example of gothic horror.

The details described in this breadcrumb trail of pages manifest themselves into the subsequent events, making for a consistently enthralling journey down a descent into madness.. It’s a pulpy, The Haunting of Hill House-style thriller viewed through the dreamlike lens of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and it’s every bit as gripping and surreal as that pairing of influences would suggest. Though I had some big factor that dragged the story down for me which I'll explain more in a YouTube video, its consistently menacing atmosphere and clever plot tricks still make for a distinctive survival-horror experience.
Full review to come on my YouTube channel.

I thought this book started out good but about half way through I was ready for it to be over. Much too long and too much internal dialogue from Kane trying to figure out magic. In the end I was still left quite confused.

Well narrated, this gothic tale was a perfect read for October. Caitlin Starling brought to life the time and place with a proper moody atmosphere and a hysterical Jane. I look forward to reading more from her.

I love horror and this one did not disappoint! A wonderful mash-up of Haunting of Hill House and Rebecca with a touch of Crimson Peaks, this Victorian Horror takes us into the life of practical Jane Shoringfield. Jane proposes to local doctor Augustine Lawrence, with the promise of it being no more than a business transaction. He accepts on the condition that she never spend the night at his home, Lindridge Hall and she help out in the Surgery. Sparks fly (in a most unassuming way) over the opened up body of a patient. Both of them with blood on their hands. This is a perfectly dark start to the love between these two people. On their wedding night, a mistake and a carriage crash finds Jane spending the night at Lindridge Hall, and this is where the book really gets going. Ghosts, magic and demons abound! I loved all of the twists and turns. Was it all real? Ghosts aren't real, but is magic? The narrator of this audiobook was great and I loved the pace. Great listen and great story!

Well that was an unexpected journey.
I knew very little going it, and thought it was going to be a haunted house/paranormal story of a newly married woman in a gothic setting.

Which it 100% was, but it took me down a path I wasn't expecting. The entire time I was wondering what is REALLY happening here, and it was a mind tripping, keep you guessing til the end experience.

It blended horror, paranormal and sci-fi beautifully, and while I don't think this book will be everyone's cup of tea (it can feel a bit dizzying at times) I personally, really enjoyed the ride.

Thoroughly enjoyed listening to this one, but it might be one of those that you listen and read at the same time, especially once things really take off in the 2nd half.

***Thank you to Macmillan Audio for providing me with the Audiobook for free via NetGalley for an unbiased review.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me with an ALC in exchange for an honest review.

The Death of Jane Lawrence was the PERFECT listen to get in the mood for the spooky Halloween season! It is gothic, so very atmospheric, gut wrenchingly creepy in every way, and overall just beautifully written. I loved the writing style, but even more than that I was obsessed with the narration of this book! This might have been my favorite audiobook of the fall season this year!

I finished this story Halloween night and boy did it deliver! There's something truly spooky about a gothic novel and if you are looking for one, this one's an excellent place!
The whole first chapter or more revolved around Jane proposing a marriage of convenience to Dr. Lawrence and then admist his protests, her seeming to push the issue which was strange; the back and forth that went between the two deciding to get married put me off so much that i did put it aside at first, but I wanted to know if Jane would die and how. Curiosity took me back to the Lawrence's and their stately secluded gothic mansion. Im glad that I went back because after a rough start, this book really took off with grisley 19th century style surgeries with Jane (a completely untrained person) assisting Dr. Lawrence; a creepy mansion that Dr Lawrence at first forbids Jane to enter. At first I thought - mad wife in the attic much??? - thinking perhaps this was a Jane Eyre retelling but it isnt. He wanted her kept away because the place is, for lack of a better word, haunted. Where the dead - some of which are patients that didnt survive - come back to haunt Dr. Lawrence. And then, there's the element of magic, the power of intent, and the reworking of reality. This book was unique, its concepts almost sci-fi, yet kept such a classic feel to it in language It was intense & dramatic &the audiobook was a stellar performance. If you put this down beginning due to Jane's almost insistance on this marriage of convenience, pick it back up! It was FATE that these two met and FATE that pushed at Jane to select him and press the issue. Jane was exactly what Dr Lawrence needs, and for all his savior complexes, she winds up being the one doing all the saving! I highly recommend for all those who love a gothic setting, with intelligent magic creation and scifi type endings! It really is a fantastic story! Thanks so much to @netgalley and @macmillan.audio for providing this fantastic audio rendition read by #Mandyweston and written by @authorcstarling

I'd like to start off by saying the things I enjoyed about this book as looking back, they almost outstayed the cons. The writing style is beautiful, the characters are engaging and quite interesting, and the setting truly was so enthralling. I think the general plot of the novel had a lot going for it and I was always interested in learning more and finishing the novel- but where it lost me was the pacing. I felt that it dragged throughout most of the book and it felt awkward at times. At points it would focus far too much on one aspect of the plot, or characters, and then it would rush forward and I'd miss some key moments that I'd want to focus more on. It made it very difficult to finish the book as I was never hooked, despite truly wanting to read the end and really wanting to finish it, I almost couldn't due to the pacing of it.

Overall, I think quite a few people will enjoy this book due to the setting and writing style (by that I mean how the author describes things, not the pacing), but I'd warn anyone that it might take a while to get into. This was also marketed as a horror book to me but I'd say it is more of a dark thriller.

I liked the premise but the beginning really didn’t do a good job of hooking me in. I feel like this is definitely for someone who wants a more atmospheric book for sure

This book was a slow start, but all the details and characters in the end made it worth it. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, and the disturbing twists made me endlessly shudder. This was a great turn-of-the-season read, and I’ll be recommending this book for anyone who needs a unique horror with an underlying mystery.

I really wanted to like this book, like really wanted to like it. There was so much excitement surrounding the release of this book and I was a ecstatic to be able to receive an advanced copy to read before Halloween. I am so sad to say that this was the first book I have ever in my life DNFed. The first half of the book was engaging and exciting and still had an element of spookiness that kept me wanting more. When I got to about the halfway point I started to lose interest because the book became a little repetitive and murky with it’s storytelling. There wasn’t enough intrigue to keep me interested in finding out the end of this book which is so sad for me to admit. I will say that this is not going to keep me from reading any of this authors other books but sadly this one just didn’t do it for me.

Thank you to net galley for the advanced listeners copy.

I really did want to like this one, especially reading it during October. I made it about halfway through the audiobook and ultimately decided to put it down. I love a slow burn of a novel, but it felt like nothing was happening and it felt more and more repetitive the further along I read. I believe part of that might have been my reaction to the narrator, whose prose felt a bit tedious at times. However, I listen to audiobooks probably half of the time so I have a pretty wide tolerance for narrators.

I've seen some truly great reviews of this book and I may try to give it another chance reading it, since the audiobook didn't work for me. Thank you for the opportunity to read this!

The first of this book was so atmospheric and intriguing to me and i was so curious as to where it was going to go. It seemed like such a great ghost story but then it took a turn. And i didn’t love where it went. I lost interest in the second half. And i wasn’t a fan of one of the main characters just dropping off like that. The connection i felt then disappeared & i didn’t love the magic angle. It just became too much for me. I just felt like it didn’t make sense. This just fell flat for me.

The narrator did a great job and i enjoyed her telling of the story.

If the movie Inception took place in a haunted house/19th century surgery and made into book form, the result would be similar to The Death of Jane Lawrence. I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent listening to this audiobook.
I received a free copy of this audiobook through NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for my honest review. All opinions stated are my own

I got to listen to an ARC of The Death of Jane Lawrence audiobook through Netgalley, and I’m really glad I did. It was a great book, and a fabulous audiobook.

If one of the Brontë sisters was alive today and writing, this is the book I think she would create. The set up feels like a traditional gothic novel. There is a woman, Jane Shoringfield, who must get married to a man she barely knows (although in this case it is Jane's decision, a nice change from the traditional arranged marriage storyline, which gives our main character more agency than in most gothic novels). The man, Dr. Augustine Lawrence, has an old dilapidated house, which he forbids Jane to ever visit. Very soon into their marriage Jane realizes that her husband isn’t quite who she imagined him to be and that he has been lying to her from the beginning. However, very quickly you realize this is no traditional gothic tale, it is truly much more crazy and wonderful than that.

The reader almost goes through the same experience as the main character when reading. In that your perception of the world changes as you read the book. At first I assumed that the story was taking place in England in the 1800s. It was never stated as such, but I guess based on my own assumptions about this type of book, the way the world was being described, and the accent of the audiobook narrator, that is what I was picturing in my head. But as the story progresses details are dropped that change the way you view the setting of the story. It is definitely not taking place in our world, and any assumptions you have about the rules of how this world works have to be disregarded.

To be honest I’m not entirely sure I understood the ending of the book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. There is a bit of a twist and I did not see it coming, once again because I thought I had an idea of what was going to happen based on other gothic tales I’ve read (particularly Jane Eyre), and those expectations were perfectly undermined. The whole book felt like it was getting exponentially crazier and crazier as it progressed, everything starts out slowly and then ramps up, and by the end things are happening a mile a minute and it is quite trippy, which I loved.

I personally got the feeling that the main character, Jane Shoringfield Lawrence, was written as autistic. She mentions multiple times how she has difficulty in social situations, problems making eye contact, and prefers to interact with the world through numbers. I don’t know if this was intentional, but I personally thought it was some good representation, in a place I didn’t expect it.

As for the audiobook itself, I really liked the narrator. She was perfect for this genre and this character. She was engaging, great to listen to, and just a little bit spooky, perfect for this book. I felt that she was performing as Jane Lawrence, rather than just reading a book.

The Death of Jane Lawrence is a scary listen. You immediately get caught up in the strange goings on with our main character Jane and continue to listen in hopes your questions get answered. Caitlin Starling was able to guess what the reader was going to think at certain points and has Jane ask those very questions herself. You'll have to listen to see if any of your guesses are correct. Like a good gothic story, The Death of Jane Lawrence is very atmospheric, building the tension by slowly unraveling the mystery of Dr. Lawrence, his strange interests, and his past. If you are listening to this book, the ending does get a bit jumbled. I don't know if it's easier to follow if you are reading. I had to re-listen to understand what was going on and just rely on a summary given by a character at the very end. A recommended read.

This was SO DAMN SPOOKY and WEIRD. I love a good gothic ghost story and in this era especially - where medicine and ghosts and death and mystery collide - and it was a chilling and bizarre read that I really enjoyed the atmospheric vibes of.

It started off really strong - Jane needs a husband of "convenience" and wants to be independent and do what she likes... and Augustine needs the same from a wife - only ask is she never goes to his home, the mysterious Lindridge Hall. A sort of business deal that works for both, but you know, of course... we all want to know WHAT IS IN THAT HOUSE. So of course... she immediately unexpectedly ends up there and that's kinda where I got a bit lost.

So much weird happens. At times I was really confused. At times a lot didn't happen. Is it ghosts? Is it magic? Unsure.... but one thing it WAS? Spooky AF! I mean - the narrator of the audiobook was phenomenal and it was such a creepy story and the writing is really fantastic, so I can't say I didn't like it, but I also didn't love it. I have many questions.

I read somewhere someone described the middle as a 'fever dream" almost like a "mindf*ck" (for lack of a better word :) and it did feel like that to me. A bit all over the place, a tad disjointed, and crazy as all get out. I kinda liked how it wrapped in the end - it's complexity and supernatural elements were actually quite beautiful, but if that's not your thing - you may not like the mindf*ck of it all.

Clever, curious, and very spooky. I look forward to what's up next for this author, but this one might have been a bit to crazy for me!

This was a perfect choice for Halloween/Fall reading. The gothic tone was perfect and I enjoyed the story and characters. I will be picking up a physical copy of this book to re-read during spooky season!