Name: The Hounding
Rating: 3.625 (8 reviews)

Xenobe Purvis

The Hounding

Gossip spread like mould in the alehouse’s dank corners

the writing style was so gorgeous, the author clearly put so much effort into accurately describing the natural landscape, the flora descriptions especially were gorgeous <3 i wanted this to be a bit weirder and the ending could have been wayyy darker but thats just my personal preference. loved how accurately the men were written lol, and the difference between different men and how the toxic patriarchy impacts them all in different ways but ultimately they are still so similar in their views of women & expectations they have. the only time it seemed the men wanted to defend the women is if they got something out of it in the end which! is super realistic 

Christina Rose Sullivan

karissa🌙

The Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides in this haunting debut about five sisters in a small village in eighteenth-century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs. Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbank to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before. The truth is that though the inhabitants of Little Nettlebed have never much liked the Mansfield girls—a little odd, think some; a little high on themselves, perhaps—they’ve always had plenty to say about them. As the rotating perspectives of five villagers quickly make clear, now is no exception. Even if local belief in witchcraft is waning, an aversion to difference is as widespread as ever, and these conflicting narratives all point to the same ultimate conclusion: Something isn’t right in Little Nettlebed, and the sisters will be the ones to pay for it. A richly atmospheric parable of the pleasures and perils of female defiance, The Hounding considers whether in any age it might be safer to be a dog than an unusual young girl.

The Hounding

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