The Silent Companions was so hard to read! Not because the book was bad, but because it was so creepy that I had to stop and take a break at certain points!

The Silent Companions starts with Elsie Bainbridge in an asylum. A new doctor, Dr Shepherd, is visiting and he manages to get Elsie to write down her story, as though it were happening to someone else. And that starts our second, and actually main plotline, what happened to Elsie to land her in an asylum? As Dr Shepherd advances his theories, the reader and Elsie are brought back to the days when a recently-widowed Elsie lived at The Bridge with Sarah, her husband’s cousin. At the same time, Sarah finds a journal belonging to one of her ancestors, talking about her life and her mute daughter.

Honestly, this book really creeped me out. The Silent Companions mentioned in the title are actually life-sized wooden figures. They were bought to entertain the King and Queen who visited in the 17th century, but two hundred years later, they still populate The Bridge. And worse, someone seems to be moving them around. I won’t lie, the companions were the most frightening part of the novel and I started to dread mentions of them because it felt like something bad would happen when they appeared.

As you can tell, the book is fantastic in terms of atmosphere. In terms of plot, though, I feel like some questions remained unanswered. The main mystery of what links the past and the present is solved, but some smaller questions: like whether certain characters were evil, what happened to a few characters, or who a minor character who provided the companions really was, remained unsolved.

And if you like stories with satisfying endings, beware of this book. The story definitely ended on a rather final note (I can easily guess what happens next), but it’s not satisfying. In fact, it left me rather dismayed because I was hoping for something quite different, and I’m sure at least one character in the book was too.

I was checking Goodreads and I just realised Laura Purcell also wrote The Corset, which I found dark and fascinating, and similarly unbingeable because I just had to take breaks from the story. So if you liked The Corset, or if you are in general looking for something dark, I would recommend both The Silent Companions and The Corset.