The Shadow Key drew me in with its gorgeous cover, the time period (18th century) and the Welsh setting. Throw in some fantasy elements, and I’m all yours.
When Henry Talbot is forced to leave his rising career as a physician at Guy’s Hospital in London, his only option is to take up Julian Tresilian’s offer to become the family and local village doctor in a remote part of Wales.
Henry finds anything but a warm welcome from the locals, but when he discovers his predecessor was apparently murdered, he is plunged into a world where his disbelief in the spiritual might just be his undoing.
Find The Shadow Tree here
The writing is beautiful, assured, the characters compelling and the story line comes with a couple of plausible twists (one I guessed). What I wasn’t too keen on was the way the baddies explain everything in long narrative passages just before they meet their justified ends. It rather took the drama out of those scenes. But a lovely read nonetheless.
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