This one wasn’t for me unfortunately. I couldn’t get into it and I didn’t like the start at all.
It felt like a chore to read and I didn’t look forward to reading it either.

This book made me think of the Woman in Black in some ways. It has all the feels of that book and more besides. If you like chilling ghost stories set in dark manor houses with mystery all around then this book is ideal. The writing is crisp and precise and leads you to some dark corners. The story is set over a few days so everything feels more immediate and scary as a result. Gothic vibes all around!

When Sam Cooper leaves Brooklyn to travel to Yorkshire to the house her late mum grew up in she has no idea what's waiting in store for her... ghostly goings on, skeletons in the closet, dark family secrets and things that go bump in the night. This is a dark, gothic tale of the lies that can stay buried in families for decades until someone uncovers the truth. Nobody is what they seem at first in this spooky tale.

Brooklyn, 1954. Following the death of her mother, Sam Cooper discovered hidden letters which revealed a family and inheritance she knew nothing about - 3000 miles away in Yorkshire, England. Curious, Sam travels to Begars Abbey - but all is not as it seems and the sense of dread increases as she is snowed in with no chance of leaving anytime soon. Does the housekeeper know more than she is letting on? Who is the woman she sees from time to time dressed all in black carrying a lantern? And why did her mother keep all this hidden from her?

Begars Abbey is a gorgeously dark gothic mystery that I couldn't put down. There is a quiet sense of foreboding whilst Sam, and the reader, tries to uncover the secrets of her family and this house. There were moments where I literally gasped out loud; it's a novel that would be so easily adapted into a movie and gave me the same feels as The Woman in Black and The Haunting of Bly Manor.

The book is plot-driven - set only over a few days there isn't really the opportunity for character development but the main protagonist is very likable - a strong and determined young woman.

I really enjoyed this book, and would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes gothic mystery / ghost stories.

I always enjoy a good gothic mystery and this is certainly one of them. The building tension and sense of foreboding had me quickly turning the pages though I did have to put it down a few times at night and start again in the morning! Very well done and I loved the dark twist at the end!

This is a very dark and creepy gothic ghost story that really gave me the chills.
I love a good ghost story and especially when it’s done well and this was and if your like me and enjoy this type of read then this one is a must read.
The atmospheric feel of the story was spot on and it had some excellent descriptive passages telling a very dark and disturbing tale. The characters were all written well and I really liked Sam in particular most of the rest were just downright weird or @scary! The book moved at a quick pace and kept me wondering throughout about was was actually real and I think that’s what really made the story so good.
So a book that made me shiver and look over my shoulder many times and if you enjoy that kind of read then you certainly have it here.
My thanks to NetGalley and Serpent’s Tail / Viper / Profile Books for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

"Begars Abbey" by VL Valentine is slightly supernatural but not so much that it gets in the way of a good old-fashioned Gothic tale about an aging woman living in a crumbling house. When Sam's mother passes away, she discovers that her Grandmother owns Begars Abbey near York. She travels over from the States in the mid-1950s to find out about her newly-found historical family. The rest is pretty much an investigation of the house and hunting down the truth as to why her mother left all those years ago. Good stuff from Valentine again!

A house of horrors ★★★★☆

When Sam’s mother Vera dies she discovers telegrams which reveal that her mother’s family were titled and live on an estate in England – and her grandmother is still alive. Penniless and with no life left in New York, Sam takes the boat to England in the hope that she will uncover some of her mother’s secrets.

As soon as she arrives in England, strange things begin to happen. First, family lawyer Roger Bell fails to meet her at the docks and instead hassled Alec Bell collects her from the train in York. Then when they finally arrive at Begar’s Abbey, there are only a maid, a nurse, a strange and secretive housekeeper who serves them mouldy food, and her elderly grandmother paralysed since a fall. Lady Cooper’s fall coincided with the death of her husband Sir Thomas and also Vera leaving Begar’s Abbey forever aged 17. Roger is still out of contact.

Sam gradually unearths some of her mother’s teenage diaries, one of which leads her to find a secret passage and a crypt where Vera suggests terrible things happened. What were Sir Thomas’s crimes? Is the rumour of a horror room and punishment true? Why are the housekeeper and the maid behaving so strangely? And is the night nurse really taking proper care of Lady Cooper?

There is something undead and festering at Begar’s Abbey.

A brilliant and terrifying gothic tour de force.

This review will go live at the first link on 22 April:

That blurb and that dark cover hinting at even dark things, there was just no walking away from Begars Abbey for me, and I’m all the happier for it: I had a great time with it.

Begars Abbey is told from the perspective of Sam Cooper, a young woman who lost her mother a little under a year ago. Feeling lost and alone with her only family gone, she’s sorting through her mother’s belongings when she finds a stack of letters revealing that her maternal grandmother, apparently an English Lady, is still alive. Which brings us to the question that permeates the entire story: why did her mother never tell Sam any of this? What made her mother leave and build a life across the pond, never mentioning anything about her family, their history?

Soon, Sam sets foot on English soil for the first time in her life, to find her roots and meet this grandmother she never even knew existed. However, her ancestral home, Begars Abbey, has lost all of its former grandeur, it’s little more than a ruin, shrouded in mystery, dank and dark and not all welcoming, and her grandmother is severely handicapped following a series of strokes.

Sam can’t reconcile the mother she’s always known with the traces of her she finds at Begars Abbey and the more she learns through reading her old diaries, the less anything makes sense. Meanwhile, I became just as obsessed as Sam with the questions that haunted her in this house where everything and everyone just felt terribly off.

Begars Abbey is delightfully mysterious, only slowly revealing its secrets, and bloody hell, what godawful truths they turned out to be. Overall, it’s not particularly action packed but it doesn’t need to be, there are so many details, little quirks that keep you on your toes, make you question what’s going on, what’s real and what’s not. Why is everyone so secretive, what do they know that Sam doesn’t, that we as readers don’t? Are there actual ghosts at Begars Abbey or is Sam seeing things, and if there are, what do they want?

Begars Abbey is an incredibly atmospheric Gothic mystery / ghost story that crawled under my skin in no time and stayed there for a long time after I finished it. Recommended.

Massive thanks to Viper Books and NetGalley for the eARC. All opinions are my own.

I thought I really enjoyed V.A. Valentine’s debut The Plague Letters, but it turns out I was wrong. I only thought I’d enjoyed it until I read Begars Abbey, and my capacity for enjoyment grew to new and intriguing size. In Begars Abbey, Valentine plunges once more into the dark depths of historical fiction and murder most foul, this time set in the 1950s in a Yorkshire winter, where the thoroughly modern and practical Sam Cooper suddenly finds herself the protagonist of what would, were it not for the inconvenience of the date, be quite at home as an Edwardian gothic horror.

Sam, who grew up poor in Brooklyn, discovers after her mother Vera’s death that she’s the surviving heir to a crumbling country estate in Yorkshire, the titular Begars Abbey. Things become immediately suspicious when Sam is warned off by the family lawyer, and even more so when that lawyer goes missing when he’s supposed to meet her in Liverpool. When she eventually arrives at Begars Abbey escorted by Alec (said lawyer’s younger brother), Sam encounters a strange and bitter housekeeper, finds her grandmother has been confined to one room for decades after a series of strokes, and is waited on by mysterious servants who appear and disappear silently at different times of day and night.

There is something wrong at Begars Abbey, and Valentine wants readers to know it. Aside from a close, tense atmosphere, Valentine also conjures physical discomforts to make your skin itch: moldering food, decades of black dirt encrusted on floorboards, and - horror of horrors - a damp, cold bed to sleep in. But most of all, everyone in the book keeps telling Sam to her face that something is wrong, to her face. Her mother never told Sam about Begars Abbey, Alec keeps up an almost unceasing commentary about how much he hates the place, and the housekeeper absolutely refuses to talk about why Vera ran away from home aged 17.

This absolute openness about how screwy everything is means that you’re never really not unnerved, and Sam’s quiet moments alone with cups of tea (which she hates) are welcome respite, like finding a safe room in a survival-horror video game. I almost feared for Sam any time she fell asleep. At the same time, Sam is a gutsy and likeable protagonist who pushes herself to explore a bone-filled priory crypt even after encountering spooks a-plenty there multiple times. I liked Sam very much, especially her struggle to be authentically herself in such an unnatural and off-putting place, and her capacity to be afraid and yet talk herself into not being afraid when the danger had passed.

Similar to the book being open about something being very much up, Beggars Abbey also quite casually introduces the concept of the building being haunted, by both the metaphorical past and… other things. But that Valentine brings this in so soon only works in the book’s favour, because you end up being pretty sure at least one person is a ghost but you’re really not sure who, and then you start thinking that probably everyone is dead, hell if I know, I mean they’ve been cut off from the world for a couple of days, maybe this is kind of like how it turned out everyone in Lost was in purgatory…

It’s not that, of course, because Valentine is too good a storyteller for that, but Begars Abbey will surprise you, make you second guess yourself, and have you looking over your shoulder. A book you wish you could read in by the fireside while a thunderstorm rages outside. Every so often you’d get up to check the lock, and shiver as your bare feet touch the floor. A dreadful delight.

A “simple knit”. Clichés about “the Americans” and “the English” firmly set in place, the narrative tone a bit condescending, the “lost rich family” plot a bit well-used.
The story is knitted in the “discovery/scare/recovery/cup-of-tea” pattern. In fact, there are so many cups of tea featuring, that I felt quite waterlogged at the end of it.
Nevertheless, some quite interesting build-ups of goosebumpiness in a gothic, spooky house where you never quite know what’s real or who’s after you.

I really enjoyed this book, creepy and atmospheric shrouded with mystery and sprinkled with suspense. I was gripped and couldnt put it down, it was well written with good characters that were well developed and an interesting and chilling storyline. I really enjoyed it.

3.5 stars

Possible spoilers.


There are strange goings on at Begars Abbey, and to be honest they just get stranger and stranger as the book goes on,so that I was never really sure who was real,and who to trust.
Sam was a great character,and her relationship with her mother was interesting. So many questions.
But the action really starts when you get to the Abbey.
Creepy at times,downright puzzling at others.
A very good follow up to the successful Plague letters.

Just finished Begars Abbey and sorry that it finished. What a great read, our protagonist is a ballsy young American Sam who loses her mother and discovers she has a grandmother living in England. Set in the fifties the author brings the reader on an exciting journey filled with mystery and lies. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and had it read in two days! If you like slightly gothic, well written mysteries then this is for you. Valentine has a fine writing skill and the characters are well drawn. My very grateful thanks to Netgalley, the authors and the author for an ARC of this very enjoyable book.