Small Angels: 'A twisting gothic tale of darkness, intrigue, heartbreak and revenge' Jennifer Saint

Product Information

Chloe has been planning her dream wedding for months. She has the dress, the flowers, and the perfect venue: Small Angels, a charming old church in the village where her fiancé, Sam, and his sister, Kate, grew up. But days before the ceremony, Chloe starts to hear unsettling stories about Small Angels—and worse, she begins to see, smell, and hear things that couldn’t possibly be real.

In terms of comparisons, this novel’s narration recalls Donna Tartt's 'The Little Friend', where all we witness is coloured through the psyche of a young female protagonist. I’d also recommend this to fans of Jeanette Winterson’s style (especially ‘The Daylight Gate’). ‘Small Angels’ gave me the same reading pleasure as Sarah Waters’s ‘The Little Stranger’ or 'The Paying Guests', particularly the tantalising section after Frances and Lilian have murdered Leonard and are awaiting the consequences. Surprisingly, I found myself also recalling the mood of Daphne du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’: there's something reminiscent of the scene during the inquest, where the second Mrs de Winter (and the reader) is full of the knowledge of what Maxim has done, and is humming with fright and dashing through consequences and alternative courses of action in her mind, to save him, before she faints. I initially rated this as 4 stars but it's played on my mind a lot since I finished, and I decided I was being parsimonious. So the premise of this book intrigued me as soon as I saw it as an August @bookofthemonth selection. Woods that are living? A bride in danger? A dead boy haunting those woods? Sign. Me. Up. Unfortunately though, this one felt a little too drawn out for me and I didn't really get overly interested until the very end.

This book was an unexpected burst of joy for me. It was a perfectly chilling and spooky (yet somehow cozy) fall read. It made me want to light a candle and make something warm to drink while reading it. Small Angels" is steeped in magical realism and hauntings, vivid imagery and foreboding darkness, beautiful prose and deep mystery. While the story itself is compelling, the way it’s told is not. I just couldn’t sink myself into it like I have other ghost stories and horror tales that have been released this year. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.

Every family has its strange, painful place, Chloe had thought, just as every house has one drawer full of chaos, crammed with nails and knotted string, orphaned keys and half-burned candles." The trees in the woods remembered; they could whisper to one another of things past and days long gone. They were hungry for human dramas, and they loved to hear stories from the village below." As Chloe and Sam’s wedding approaches and the church is now thoroughly cleaned and aired, something bad is awakening in the woods; something which is gaining strength. Small Angels is a gothic horror that tells the story of love, betrayal, sacrifice and loss through an essence that is otherworldly yet starkly human. In a hypnotic tale of sisterhood, first love, and hauntings, a wedding in a small English village stirs up unsettling magic and forces a troubled family’s secrets out into the open.

green on green for miles. Some nights, it was said, you might find yourself walking amongst trees that had fallen centuries before. Tell it to the trees. This was once high praise in the village below the woods. It was what you might say at the close of a lively tale—told at dusk in late December, with a good fire snapping at the coals.

Stunning. Perfect for lovers of folklore and gothic fiction’ Elizabeth Lee, author of CUNNING WOMEN My grandma, when she first met the man who would become my husband, said, “This one’s still too green,” meaning that he wasn’t quite finished ripening yet. Hadn’t quite grown all the way up yet. She was right. That’s how I feel about this book. It has the feeling of not quite being done. It still needs some time in the oven. If the mood was right—if there was a clear moon and no call to retire early, maybe you’d go further:

Customer reviews

I think I saw this classified as a horror book somewhere, but I didn't get that. Is it a little eerie in parts? Sure, but horror seems a bit extra. This was well written and the story was decent but it never really grabbed me. By the end I was sort of skimming along.