A hellish dog with fiery eyes stalks this novel: the Gytrash, subject of a northern English ghost story that is here powerfully repurposed ... Infused with the uncanny and Bower's poetic sensibilities, the claustrophobic desperation of this unflinching debut builds relentlessly to a heart-stoppingly dramatic climax, revealing fellowship forged in the face of direst adversity

Daily Mail

A gritty and captivating tale of resilience, violence and the power of female solidarity, Bower's debut novel is a startling account of three women living in northern England bound together by the eerie folklore of the region

Harper's Bazaar, 20 absorbing fiction books to pick up in 2025

Haunting, lyrical and thoroughly gripping. At once heartbreaking and hopeful, poetic and skilfully plotted, this novel shines a compassionate and achingly honest light on three women's struggles with motherhood, poverty, and coercive control. These characters and their lives will stay with me for a long time

Clare Fisher, author of ALL THE GOOD THINGS

A rich, wild, completely absorbing novel that draws us into the troubled worlds of three very different women. An exploration of motherhood, abuse, poverty and age which had me hooked from the start, rooting for these women to find a way through their current situations to something better. Bower's evocation of place, and the shifting darkness that seeps through the everyday, is extraordinary. Devastating and hopeful, she weaves light and dark into pure magic. I can't recommend it enough

Sarah Butler, author of TEN THINGS I'VE LEARNT ABOUT LOVE

Bower fuses the burnished beauty of poetry, the rawness of realism and the sublime soul-wracking thrill of Gothic horror and offers us this novel which is as close to flawless as a novel can get. She distils the horror from the everyday domestic and offers it back to us in this immaculate trinity of women's lives in a prose that burns with terror, rage and, somehow through all the devastation, immense love. The empathy and humanity with which Bower captures the very best and worst of humanity is truly astounding. This is a debut that heralds a masterful new literary great

Karina Lickorish Quinn, author of THE HOUSE OF SKIN

The language of Rachel Bower's debut novel surges from the river – carrying a powerful story that will leave you changed

Kimberly Campanello, author of MOTHERBABYHOME