Today I’m delighted to be kicking off the blog tour for Our Wicked Histories by Amy Goldsmith. This was a wonderfully atmospheric and beguiling horror mystery. Thank you to Hannah Walker at Ink Road Books for inviting me to participate in the tour. I also recently had the privilege of interviewing Amy for The Nerd Daily.
For Meg the rules are simple: keep your head down, know your place, and stay invisible until graduation. That is, until the glamorous and intimidating Wren twins – Lottie and Sebastien – decide to take Meg under their gilded wings.
But not all that glitters is gold.
Following an incident at the Midsummer Ball, Meg finds herself suspended from school and shunned by Lottie, Sebastien and all their friends. Desperate to make amends, she accepts an unexpected invitation to an exclusive party at Wren Hall.
But when one of the party-goers disappears and a violent storm traps the group inside the house, she realizes there’s more to the Wren twins than meets the eye . . .
Publication Date: 30th July
TW: death, murder, grief, drowning, obsession, classism, reference to suicide, child death
My Thoughts:
Our Wicked Histories was such a spine-tingling speculative horror mystery that I gobbled up greedily.
Amy Goldsmith burst onto the YA scene and straight into my horror loving heart last year with Those We Drown. It had excellent use of atmosphere, complex characterisation and a fiercely compelling plot. With Our Wicked Histories, Goldsmith cements these as hallmarks of her work and excellent ones at that. I absolutely adore the edge of mythology that feeds into her work and gives it this speculative edge. It makes it feel like a more linear place, where the line between fantasy and reality may ebb and blur. This is particularly true for me here with an exquisite interweaving of Irish mythology. It hits that classic horror trope of the outsiders being unaware of what they’ve stumbled into while also belying the chasm of the class dynamic prominently at play here.
Meg is under immense pressure to maintain her scholarship and her class places her at odds immediately. She simply does not inhabit the same world as these other characters, growing up in lives of immense wealth. There are clear cracks though, echoed by the crumbling family mansion. I really enjoyed this element of social commentary and how it altered the outlooks and attitudes of certain characters. Overall the characterisation and atmosphere were stellar, with some great twists and shifting dynamics.
I love horror for being able to bring out the monstrosity of humanity and face it head on – this can be literal or metaphorical. I have always been fascinated by the genre, so much so that I ended up studying it partially. The Gothic is such a phenomenal genre that has expanded and birthed offshoots that will haunt your nightmares. There is a power in being able to control your fear and face it despite being terrified. Goldsmith understands that latent power, using it here often to explore hidden secrets and dynamics that are enshrouded in mystery. It taps into wider traumas, particularly within this enmeshed web of privilege and power being exploited.
Our Wicked Histories is a gorgeously Gothic horror mystery that deserves a firm place on your Summerween reading.
Please check out the rest of the stops on this tour and pick up this brilliant book. You can find more details about the upcoming stops below.
A Short Book Lover 
2 thoughts on “Blog Tour: Our Wicked Histories by Amy Goldsmith”