Rawblood is a gothic horror love story that falls into the annals of literary classics. Indeed, the undercurrents of the novel whisper of Wuthering Heights, The Turn of the Screw, Rebecca, the Woman in White and others.At the beginning, we are introduced to the family trees of the Villarca family and that of the Gilmores and the Coulsons. Time unravels in a non linear orientation and we encounter the people (major and minor) in the family tree in what appears to be a random fashion, and their li...

We first meet Iris Villarca in 1910 when she is eleven. She lives with her father at Rawblood, a lovely house on Dartmoor. However, although her existence appears idyllic, there are dark issues beneath the surface. The Villarca’s always die young and Iris’s father has implemented, ‘The Rules.’ This means that Iris and her father must live alone, with no servants and no friends. Iris only has one friend – Tom Gilmore, a local boy – but even that is forbidden.This novel ranges backwards and forwar...

3.5 stars: somewhere between "I liked it" and "I really liked it." Rounding up for a great ending.This book has strong elements of horror in it; sensitive readers might want to avoid. (Animal violence included.)It's really hard to describe this book without spoiling anything. It's a gothic novel about a family cursed with a "white lady," who has haunted their ancestral house for generations. It's about Iris, the last daughter of the house. And it's about her family before her and how the curse a...

Moving writing, but ultimately the story didn't quite do it for me. A lot of it was quite boring.

This book is freaking brilliant. If you like literary gothic horror with a bit of the supernatural and like non linear timelines with plot lines that have puzzles to solve. This book is your jam!

"She comes in the night. Sometimes, in mist or fog. A woman, or once a woman. White, starved...Have you not felt her? Waiting in the shadowed places outside the lamplight, at the bottom of wells. Behind you, in long dark corridors..." I just explained this book from start to finish in full spoiler-ridden glory to my fiancé. He looked at me afterward, slightly aghast, and said, "The hell did you just read?" Then he started laughing. "How the hell do you review that?" I'm still struggling to an

Papa always said there was no heaven, no hell. But there is. I’m in it. In the dark beating heart of it all.Wow. This was absolutely awesome. Possibly the most gothic book I’ve ever read. The first half of this book I wasn’t sure what to make of it but I’m glad I persevered.

When it comes to horror a Gothic tale has something that with all likelihood always will appeal to me. Add a mysterious family haunted by an entity just called "her" and I'm sold. THE GIRL FROM RAWBLOOD instantly appealed to me with its fascinating cover and interesting description. Iris and her father live in a lonely old mansion on Dartmoor and he warns her that she should never fall in love because strong feelings bring on "her" and when she comes, brutal death will follow. Nevertheless, Iris...

Set in 1910 in Dartmoor,this ghost story as a unique feel to it, gothic and creepy I loved it. The author did a fantastic job with the characters,with a awesome setting you felt as if you were there,living and feeling what irises-pest, was going through. Brilliant back story which jumps to the present and back which the author did effectively and seemingly with appropriate ease, we learn of the curse, I won't give anything away as I believe everyone would enjoy this novel highly recommended it a...

(Review originally published on my blog, November 2015)Rawblood opens with the idiosyncratic voice of eleven-year-old Iris Villarca. She lives with her father in a lonely mansion, the titular Rawblood, on Dartmoor. There, he has convinced her of the legend of their family: the Villarcas suffer from a hereditary condition, given the evocative moniker 'horror autotoxicus', and Iris will die young if she neglects to follow his strict set of capital-R Rules. Essentially, the Rules say she must stay

I'm in the minority with this one according to the other reviews. I finished it but I didn't really want to. The writing style was uncomfortable for me and I wasn't able to connect with the characters. I got a bit more into it towards the end, but not much. So, this one wasn't for me. But, I will absolutely read this author again.

"Rawblood" by Catriona Ward is a gothic novel written today; meaning that it mingles all of the classical elements of gothic horror and creates a gruesome story. It takes a lot of classical texts that we love such as "Macbeth", "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" as well as Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and uses them in this modern story about Iris, a young girl who lives in the house of Rawblood with her father. The house is haunted, and there is a curse on Iris and her family which creates compl...

Author's Envy! I wish I'd written this book! Here's why: http://www.mark-hodder.com/authorsenv...

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐Genre: HorrorRawblood is the story of Iris Villarca. An eleven-year-old girl who lives with her father at their isolated house Rawblood. Iris soon finds out that there is a horrible congenital disease that runs in their family and that is why her father wants to isolate her and keep her away from everyone else especially her friend Tom. Whether the disease is the truth or just a cover-up to something more sinister that’s for you to find out. Rawblood was a part of my horror October re...

A thank you to Catriona Ward, Sourcebooks, and Netgalley for sharing this copy for an unbiased review.Ward has an impressive grasp of the metaphor and leads the reader to conclusions instead of blatantly stating what's happened. I appreciate both of those methods. Ultimately The Girl from Rawblood is a book about love and who belongs together, not just a ghost story. Relegating it to that box would sell it short. It's written like a diamond, facet upon facet, one section shining into the next th...

A literary horror story that follows the cursed Villarca family and their ancestral home.We start in the early 20th century with the last surviving Villarcas, young Iris and her father Allonso living at Rawblood, their estate in Devonshire. Iris lives a sheltered and proscribed existence because of her father's obsession with a curse which has killed everyone in the family for generations. As we get different points of Iris's life the story jumps around in time giving us the story of the family

Iris and her father, Alonso, live at Rawblood on Dartmoor. Alonso does not allow Iris to make friends because of the family curse. Iris doesn't want to be lonely so she makes friends with Tom Gilmore. This is a mistake.I have to say that it was realy difficult to write a first paragraph summary of this story because a) there isn't one and b) what there is is in so many disjointed parts that it makes no sense whatsoever. I really struggled to work out who the characters even were; in fact, the fa...

I'm sorry, but I didn't enjoy this book very much. It was fine for the first 200 pages, then it became increasingly difficult to understand, and by the end, I didn't have the faintest idea what had happened or why. The book seems to have been written in a deliberately obscure way in order to confuse the reader; there are multiple viewpoints, time-shifts and attempts at over-literary, semi-poetic writing that ultimately are a complete turn off. I ended up feeling deeply frustrated and really rath...

This book is many things; an interesting reverse ghost story, an experimental Gothic story, the debut of horror literature’s shooting star Catriona Ward… It is many things but it is not my book.Even trying to describe the plot seems like a rather difficult task, in retrospect, but I’ll give my best shot. The story starts with two young friends, Tom Gilmore and Iris Villarca, spending their days on a Gothic property in Dover named Rawblood and owned by Iris’ father Alonso. They’re very close and

As an author, it's very hard to not to read with a critical eye. You think "I would have done that differently" or "An editor should have caught that." Reading often feels like an exercise in critique.From the very first page of RAWBLOOD, I knew that I was out of my depth.The scent and vividness of Ward's prose takes hold from the off and clings tight until the fading of the last. She writes like a master impressionist painter, simultaneously colouring the Devon moors with subtlety, intricacy an...