Review - House of Splinters by Laura Purcell

House of Splinters

Laura Purcell
Raven Books, 9 October 2025
Available as: HB, 349pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781526627230

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of House of Splinters to consider for review.

House of Splinters is a bewitching ghost story, a return to the world of The Silent Companions and a prequel of sorts, its events set at the end of the 18th century and drawing on the same, early 16th century background, as a young couple, Belinda and Wilfrid Bainbridge, attempt to make The Bridge their home.

Ancestral taint is thick here. There is not only the history of witch Anne Bainbridge, but a vivid implication of the present-day Bainbridges benefiting from colonial rapacity. Wilfrid's black sheep brother has been employed by the East India Company. Belinda's father and brother are engaged in the West Indies trade, with all the implications of that. And Wilfrid himself is, with whatever handwringing, about to turn the villagers off the common so that he can enclose it for wheat.

That background of cursed wealth is reflected in a panoply of gothic horror that strikes the family and their servants. Belinda is already predisposed to fear the house, after events five years before when her sone was born there, and she soon recognises that its malice is particularly directed at her and her newborn, Lydia. But what is the cause of that malice, and can it be placated? 

I really enjoyed this book. A good example of the gothic is, in my experience, quite rare. It's not enough to deploy the trappings - the bumps in the night, the isolated location, the sudden scares - you need to build, and continually deny, that growing atmosphere of claustrophobia and suppressed panic. Purcell is one author who can reliably do this with her novels that leverage the position of women in a patriarchal society into a fraught sense of confinement (literal in Belinda's case with the use of that term as she approaches childbirth). House of Splinters is a brilliant example of that, Lydia unable to take the actions she needs due to matters of convention, money and status, not least the patriarchal headship of her husband (however nice a man he may seem to be).

I sensed a little touch here of Wilkie Collins in the way that Belinda's plight isn't only due to the supernatural, but she is also trapped by societal conventions and mysogyny, but also in the strength and resourcefulness she shows in seeking to protect herself and her children. And the novel ends on an eerie, threatening hint of what's to come in the future.

All in all, an exciting, frightening and atmospheric book, perfect for the dark nights.

For more information about House of Splinters, see the author's website here.