Grace Tapp can see ghosts. (Although she doesn't particularly want to talk about it.)
When her relationship ends on the worst possible terms, Grace flees her boyfriend and arrives in the Lake District determined to have an uneventful summer. Her new home is calm and picturesque, just what she wanted, but looks can be deceiving...
Next door, single parent Danny is reeling from his beloved wife's death, struggling to come to terms with the secrets she took to the grave. He knows something truly awful must have happened if she felt she couldnāt confide in him - but he can't imagine what on earth it could be.
As Grace gets to know Danny, it becomes clear there are dark secrets hidden in this seemingly idyllic village. And, whether she likes it or not, her talent for communicating with the dead puts her in a unique position to uncover the truth.
Grace becomes obsessed with piecing together what really happened - and she must work quickly, because when her past threatens to catch up with her, she'll need to know whom among her new friends she can trust, and whom she most certainly can't.
Grace Tapp can see ghosts. (Although she doesn't particularly want to talk about it.)
When her relationship ends on the worst possible terms, Grace flees her boyfriend and arrives in the Lake District determined to have an uneventful summer. Her new home is calm and picturesque, just what she wanted, but looks can be deceiving...
Next door, single parent Danny is reeling from his beloved wife's death, struggling to come to terms with the secrets she took to the grave. He knows something truly awful must have happened if she felt she couldnāt confide in him - but he can't imagine what on earth it could be.
As Grace gets to know Danny, it becomes clear there are dark secrets hidden in this seemingly idyllic village. And, whether she likes it or not, her talent for communicating with the dead puts her in a unique position to uncover the truth.
Grace becomes obsessed with piecing together what really happened - and she must work quickly, because when her past threatens to catch up with her, she'll need to know whom among her new friends she can trust, and whom she most certainly can't.
The front door clunked its everyday clunk, my house key cool and familiar between my fingers as I deadlocked Ben inside. I didnāt peer through the glass. I pocketed the keys as if I were popping to the shop, then set off in the direction of the Metrolink, casual as anything. I wasnāt exactly whistling and swinging my arms, but neither did I feel as though I were on the run. My thoughts were pure white noise and my hand steady on the handle of my suitcase.
Ana trailed down the street behind me, complicit in the whole thing, naturally.
āI didnāt think you had it in you,ā she said, too cheerfully. āHonestly. Iām actually impressed. Grace? Are you listening to me? Look, I think youāre in shock. Your face has gone all weird.ā
Shock would make sense. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I wasnāt okay. My breaths came in irregular gasps and there was a high, faint ringing in my ears. I could feel my heartbeat in my teeth. But it was evident some sort of survival instinct had kicked in, stuffing the forefront of my mind with cotton wool and allowing me to float along on a fuzzy cloud. After all, what was the alternative? Intolerable, thatās what.Ā
I caught a dry, painful cough in the crook of my arm and focused my gaze on the road ahead.
āWeāve got ages,ā Ana said, all business. āLetās find somewhere to sit.ā
I blinked, surprised to discover we were standing beneath the departure board at Manchester Piccadilly. My body must have carried me there on muscle memory alone. I couldnāt make sense of the train times on the display. It was as if my head were underwater, the words and numbers peeling from the screen and shimmering past like tiny fish.Ā
Ana stepped into my eyeline and beckoned for me to follow her to a row of grubby seats, where we sat shoulder to shoulder in silence for a while. I felt drunk, my thoughts fluctuating between doubting my own existence and feeling somehow too real, wildly conspicuous here in this busy public space. I wouldnāt have been surprised to feel a firm hand on my shoulder, grabbing me, arresting me, dragging me back home, but none came.
Time passed for a while in this dreamlike, incalculable fashion. Then we were standing on one of the grottier platforms at the rear of the station, and it became apparent the trains were at a complete standstill. The collective vibe of the crowd descended into a hum of acute tension as we waited, and waited. It was much harder, under these circumstances, to keep reality at bay.Ā
I perched on my suitcase, studying my hands. A muscle in one of my fingers had started to spasm. This finger, I thought, has a guilty conscience.Ā
Beside us, a suited and booted man bellowed into his phone. āFucking ridiculous, mate. Theyāve got no fucking explanation for it. Absolutely fucking ridiculous.ā He went on and on. āI donāt geddit. How hard can it be to just send a fucking train? Heads will roll, dāya know what Iām saying?āĀ
I pitied the person on the other end of the phone for having to listen to him, and then I pitied myself for having nobody on this earth to whom I could make a similar, obnoxious call.Ā
By the time a rail replacement bus had been organised, I was unravelling at pace. If Iād been grinding my teeth any harder, they would have crumbled away to dust, my whole skull folding in on itself like a fortune cookie.Ā
The word murder appeared from nowhere, flitting like a moth about the edges of my consciousness, but I swatted it away, a cold bead of sweat trickling from between my shoulder blades to the small of my back. I pressed my temple to the cloudy bus window and tried to will myself back into the comfort of an emotional void.Ā
Meanwhile, Ana swayed in the aisle and sighed pissily at intervals. Somewhere near Lancaster she said, āI just know youāre going to make this out to be my fault.āĀ
I made an elaborate display of putting in my earphones.
āHe got what he deserved,ā she persisted. āIf youād listened to me months ago, we could have avoided all of this. Now is not the time to be such a bleeding heart, Grace. Youāve got to get a grip for onceāā
āOh, just fuck off!ā I twisted in my seat to scream at her, my eyes filling with hot tears.
The other harried passengers flinched, half of them staring, the rest averting their gaze. The man beside me folded his newspaper supplement, rose slowly and moved to the back of the bus, where he was offered a narrow portion of seat by a sympathetic onlooker.Ā
Ana smirked and took his place.Ā
So much for keeping a low profile, leaving no trail. Everyone on this bus would remember my outburst, my face. I wasnāt going to get away with it, I wasnāt going to be able to hide for long. It was only a matter of time until I was caught.
The plan to abscond to Bluebell Cottage together had been Anaās idea in the first place.Ā
Our final destination was a tiny, terraced cottage in the bucolic Lake District tourist trap of Halsmere; traditional stone walls, voluptuous swells of ivy, single-glazed windows, the whole gorgeous shebang. Weād looked at it on Airbnb several times, using an incognito browser in the dead of night, speaking in hushed tones so we didnāt wake Ben.Ā
āIāve stayed here before,ā she said. āItās perfect.ā
āIād never be able to afford it, though.ā
āTrust me, I know the landlord, heās a pushover. You can call him up and be charmingā¦āĀ
She paused here to very deliberately look me up and down. I was in my pyjamas, snotty and puffy from crying, but I knew even in my smartest clothes, on my best day, sheād manage to get in a few digs about my general presentation and personality.Ā
āI mean, I can tell you what to say,ā she went on. āI know just how to push his buttons. You can haggle a good rate for the whole summer. Think about it! Itāll be like disappearing into thin air. Ben will never know to look for you there.ā
Having read rather a lot on the subject of emotional manipulation recently, I knew what Ana was doing here was called āneggingā. I also knew I was too tired not to be susceptible to it. I sighed. Iād allow myself to be negged one last time. The cottage did look nice.
By the time we arrived - with what should have been a two hour journey eventually taking over six - Iād given up trying to hold myself together. I trudged up the hill into Halsmere Village, crying freely.
Ana was acting bizarrely too, even by her standards. As the row of cottages came into view at the end of the lane, she stopped dead.Ā
āIāve changed my mind.ā Her tone was tremulous. āIā¦ I canāt do it.ā
I didnāt break my stride. It was far too late for either one of us to have second thoughts.Ā
When I reached the garden gate, my suitcase was too large to fit between the unusually narrow-set gate posts. I tried to jam it through with sheer brute force, spatial awareness not exactly being my forte, and when this didnāt work, I tried lifting it up-and-over, but upper body strength has never been my forte either. The only way I could get the case onto the property was to use the low stone wall as a fulcrum, rolling the suitcase on top and then pushing it over into the garden with a grunt.Ā
I braced myself to receive a sarcastic remark about this display of ineptitude from Ana, but when I looked up, she wasnāt there.
Unbidden, the memory of Ben as Iād left him - face down on the floor in the hallway of our home - barged its way to the fore. The enormity of what Iād done was all at once painfully clear.Ā
It was only supposed to have been a break-up. Thatās all. I couldnāt begin to understand how Iād let it go so badly wrong.Ā
With desperate hands, I scrabbled to open the stiff little key-box, and entered Bluebell Cottage alone.
When Kindred Spirits opens there's a sense of urgency. Grace is leaving her home in a rush and escaping to an Airbnb. She had a terrible fight with her boyfriend, Ben, and it ends in violence. Ana is with her. She approves of what happened. But when they arrive at their location Ana disappears. Danny, a widower lives next door. He's having a bad day. His four-year-old Scarlett gave him a hard time settling into bedtime. He's in a sour mood and obsessing over his deceased wife's secrets. He notices Grace's arrival but he makes no moves to help with her stuff.
Ana is the ghost that lives with Grace. This not-so-friendly spirit harasses Grace so she can do her bidding, but she would prefer to focus her energy on her keen agony. Grace can't shake the ghosts, but they're harmless compared to the living.
I could tell from the first chapter that I was reading something special. It's official: this is one of my favorite books of 2022.
Ben knows Grace sees ghosts and uses it to belittle her when they argue.
It stings when someone you expect to handle your feelings as carefully as a baby bird suddenly makes a tight fist around them.
Kindred Spirits is the perfect chilling summer read about ex-boyfriends who won't leave you alone. There's that air of menace when Grace sees his texts:
Overt threats of violence had become a daily occurrence and they hit differently depending on what level of distraction was at my disposal when I read them.
I can relate to the mind games. The story moves you; it's not just the grieving husband. I don't want to oversell it but Eva Barker presents a Masterclass in storytelling. Grace's thoughts show that she thinks she's unhinged, impossible to love. She apologizes a lot and thinks it will work out. These are signs of emotional abuse.
I was immediately drawn into the story of an abusive boyfriend, a ghost, and a widower. It's a book that shows you what writing psychological thrillers are all about. The most intriguing/interesting aspect was how all the major characters were connected.
Kindred Spirits makes me an optimist. Readers who enjoy ghost stories will find comfort here.