Mist In The Willows
Discharged unexpectedly from the British military at the peak of her career, Jade Palmer must find a way to rebuild her life. Haunted by strange nightmares and fragments of her own fractured memories, Jade finds herself thrust among unfriendly family and unfamiliar friends. Her only comfort is in the cobbled streets, quaint cottages and winding river paths that hold the happy echoes of her childhood.
But in the local cemetery, older than living memory, a strange mist rises among the willows in the depths of the night… and with it, a vengeful entity that seems to stalk Jade’s every footstep with terrifying purpose.
Alongside her faithful dog, Cannelloni, and wild-child sister, Leela, Jade must fight once more—braving a tangled journey through ancient supernatural lore, and the depths of her own hubris, to protect those she loves.
For the dead have truths to tell… and their retribution comes as cold as the grave.
Mist in the Willows, the first entry in the Spirit Fleet Chronicles, is a chilling and cozy gothic novel about loss, cupcakes, annoying family, mysterious steampunk strangers, and the ways in which violence may haunt us all.
Purchase Link
My Review
Thanks to Rachel, of Rachel’s Random Resources for organising this tour and to Lucy for my copy of this book. The package was magnificent. Loved the artwork!
For those curious about said package, I shared it on my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/DdykbUagoKR/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&stkn=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
This is the story of Jade, ex-RAF, PTSD, pining for her girlfriend, Ami, still in Afghanistan (although it’s never named, it’s obvious this book is set in the months before and during the evacuation), who has returned home to find her dad doesn’t want to deal with her PTSD, her step-mother has turned her bedroom into a jewellery making room, and her grandfather has reluctantly allowed her, and her rescue dog Cannelloni to move into his house boat on the Thames. He expects Jade to pick up after him, just like her grandmother did and Jade is refusing to do more than her own share of the work.
Jade spends her days trying to find work as a cyber security expert, helps elderly people remove viruses from their computers, cycles 5 hours a day, eats nearly nothing, and visits her mothers grave in the local church. She’s avoiding her sister Leela, who keeps asking intrusive questions about why she left the RAF.
Weird stuff starts to happen.
One night the radio starts acting up. Then Jade sees a dark figure on the other side of the river watching her.
Visiting her mother’s grave, she sees a strange man in the cemetery and a rising mist that seems to come from the older end of the graveyard.
As the appearance of the dark figure happens more often, Jade becomes more frightened, until she has an encounter with the mysterious graveyard man and apparently his superior. They’re part of some order that watches over the dead.
Jade puzzles out the mystery and confronts the shadowy figure, while processing her PTSD at the graveyard, with Leela.
That’s a basic summary and I’m not too happy with it, but I don’t want to just retell the story or give away vital parts of the plot.
I did like this story and should the next novel be offered for review, I’ll take it. I want to know who the Spirit Fleet are. Although I think Theodora is being harsh, blaming Jeronymo for Jade potentially being recruited.
The atmosphere built to a creepy crescendo, lightened by Jade’s trip to the beauty parlour with the vicar’s wife. I liked the vicar’s wife, she’s fun and interesting. The vicar is a bit of a pompous twat though. The intertwining of real world events, contrasting the stress and fear of Afghanistan, with the bucolic calm of a Thames-side town, really built the tension, as the reader learns with Jade about the trigger for not just her PTSD but the weird events when she’s home. Her relationships with various family members and her fears for her girlfriend are realistic, and I did enjoy her rants about Alan pretending he can’t do basic things like wash his own clothes and her step-mother’s enabling of his misogyny.
Leela is a posh 19 year old, at uni and enjoying her life, which adds a bit of conflict, because she can’t understand Jade’s reluctance to talk, and pushes when Jade has isolated herself. She has a cupcake subscription and likes to make costumes for parties, and doesn’t have sex with random men. It’s very ‘Instagram friendly’, or maybe Tik Tok, I don’t know what people half my age are doing. And Jade seems as confused by Leela’s choices as I am. She’s also frustrated with Leela, because Leela questions the reason Jade was even in Afghanistan, and the safety of those Afghanis who work for British Forces there. As we all know, the evacuation turned into a shit show and the Afghan people who helped have been struggling to get refugee resettlement, because we have shitbag politicians who appeal to lowest common denominator idiots.
PTSD isn’t the only mental illness Jade has. I’m pretty certain she has orthorexia. This is an obsession with excessive exercise, limiting calories and ‘clean’ eating. She checks the calories on the choc chips she put in her protein smoothie because it’s an ‘indulgence’. She hassles Leela about her weight while mouthing platitudes about how all bodies are beautiful. She exercises for 5 hours a day and calculates how much more she’ll have to do to work off a ‘treat’. This is not healthy!
I wasn’t sure about the writing style, I think it would have been better as straight third person, rather than the conceit of Jade telling her dead mum about things after they happened and the confusing moving between first and third unannounced. I see the reasoning behind it, but it didn’t work quite right.
A cosy, spooky novel that I will probably re-read.
Author Bio
Doodler. Living in a perpetual state of Halloween. Fueled by chocolate. Boxer. Unapologetic introvert. Adopted by three cats and a cat-sized dog. Purple everything. Psychology student. Goth. Can be bribed with artsy, hard cover notebooks. Ghost friendly. Will be summoned by freshly brewed coffee. Suspiciously familiar with Greco-Roman mythology, and several dead languages commonly used for demon summoning. Wall-frames maps. Devout observer of cupcake o’clock. Feminist Motto: Skulls, Bats and Witches’ Hats. Spinning while audiobooking. All you need is fluffy socks and a pint of nice-cream. Frequently channels Disney Villains. Names her house spiders. Owner of a pet GAMER, whom she’s kept in his man cave, on a diet of pizza and horror movies, for well over two decades.
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