The Silent Companions, by Laura Purcell

This is the best scariest ghost story I have read so far! It is set in the 1800s and is a gothic, dark horror that hooked me from the start and freaked me out so much. This book starts with the main character in an asylum, highly medicated, mute, suffering from severe trauma and accused of being a murderess. She gets a new doctor who encourages her to write down the events of what happened, and she begins to tell her story. The story hops back and forth between her time at The Bridge in 1865 and the ‘present’ in the asylum, and we also get diary entries from a woman living in the house back in 1635. It is a very immersive book and so twisty, I really had no clue how the story was going to pan out or end!

How dyslexia-friendly is it?

Some of the chapters are really long (40 pages) but some are short. I found this overall very easy to read, and I didn’t want to put it down because I needed to find out what happened. I also created a map for this book!

Map inspired by 'The Silent Companions' novel by Laura Purcell