I would like to thank Luna Press Publishing for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher - Luna Press Publishing

Published - 2/8

Price - £19.99 hardcover £4.27 Kindle ebook

Sometimes hope is the most dangerous thing of all.

When their brother dies, two sisters lose the one thing that connected them. But then a year after her twin's death, Tamsin goes missing.

Despite police indifference and her husband's doubts, Freya is determined to find her sister. But a trail of diary entries reveals a woman she barely knew, and a danger she can scarcely fathom, full of deep waters and shadowy myths, where the grief that drove Tamsin to the edge of a cliff also led her into the arms of a mysterious stranger ... A man who promised hope but demanded sacrifice...

Fantasy exists on the borders of reality and has done ever since storytelling began. The limits of our comprehension of the world that we know allows us to instead imagine what sits behind it all. How does nature, chaos and life itself all exist are the big questions we ask ourselves and on the other side of the world we have that which is hidden to our eyes leaving room for us to conjure up all sorts of explanations. Ultimately very few things in our lives have simple explanations especially people. In Lorraine Wilson’s spellbinding contemporary fantasy tale The Way The Light Bends we get a haunting, powerful and intelligent story that I think cements Wilson as a writer to watch in this genre.

In present day Scotland Freya is the oldest of her three siblings but the family has been hit by a double tragedy. Her brother Rob was diagnosed with cancer and one year one from that his twin sister Tamsin disappeared. Freya would usually be focused on her career but these two events are forcing her to review what has happened to Tamsin who was devastated by Ron’s death. Exploring Tamsin’s often hidden life we discovers a journal and through Tamsin’s own words we explore the immense grief Tamsin was trying to deal with and then the mysterious entrance of a young man named Wells who she meets at work and who offers escape. Freya discovers a sibling she finds she really never knew and this re-appraises her own life and family as well as giving her hope that if she keeps delving she will finally find her sister and get answers to so many questions.

This is an immensely powerful and captivating tale where the developing fantastical elements are intertwined with an amazing set of character dynamics. Freya, Tamsin and their wider family and friends all come to life and most interestingly we examine the same people from two perspectives. We follow Freya in third person in the aftermath of Tamsin’s disappearance and in alternating sections we hear Tamsin’s own journal voice. Wilson has expertly captured the strangeness of sibling dynamics that you can have someone you’ve known virtually all their lives but you don’t see more than one facet of their personality when they’re in front of you. Freya being a managerial career focused woman always saw her sister as wasting her life with festivals, life as a horticultural worker and from her perspective deadbeat friends. While we see Tamsin was actually someone who works hard gardening and loved teaching kids in her environment. Someone whose friends have been an emotional bedrock when she has lost her twin and unlike her family knew her best and didn’t judge her for not taking the academic path her family wanted. As this story develops you see how both have such different viewpoints and it’s a subtle reminder that family dynamics are ever shifting; that there are changing favourites and family grudges that no one tries to untangle until often far too late.

In this tale the dynamics are all under strain through the power of grief. Wilson has smartly made everyone take Rob’s death in different ways. Many like Freya have focused on being seen to be coping; shutting down discussion and carrying on with a stiff upper lip. But for Tamsin no one seems to have thought such an approach wasn’t suitable. Tamsin has lost her best friend and as a twin someone with a unique bond few comprehended. In Tamsin’s journal grief is a storm of pain and confusion pushing her to dark places where she imagines alternate versions of her life some hopeful and others more darker shaded but it’s clear she was feeling so alone. We get to see Freya in reading the journal finally understand her sister but only after she has vanished and it’s a sobering realisation that there was so much she did not see or take on board to someone she has known so long. For Freya she too finds herself alone with Tamsin’s perspective as her family and even her husband feel it’s time to move on and for the first time Freya finds that rebelling may be the best way forward to help discover the truth about her sister’s disappearance With Freya it’s the unlocking of an initially quite cool and level headed character that makes her come alive when she realised she has to take risks and not be afraid to upset people.

All of which which so far sounds a powerful novel but this blog being this blog there is more going on. Wells the new lover of Tamsin that Freya never met becomes a figure of suspicion, menace and bafflement. An enigmatic character very few can remember what he looked like; a man who loved nature and yet seems ambivalent about his fellow humans but also someone who becomes a huge support and loved to Tamsin. A special project on Tamsin’s employer’s grounds may hold the key to the mystery. It could be simple yet devastating foul play; a young woman running away in grief or just perhaps Wells knew a different strange place to make Tamsin as she saw it better.

Wilson into this family’s domestic crisis adds in fantastical elements that enhance the story and further explore this theme of shifting perspectives. Is Wells a hero or villain; are the events that Tamsin described due to grief or magic and are older legends playing a part or a simple explanation. This is very much a tale of borders - life and death; myth and reality or love and hate. Slowly older legends of the world are being hinted at who would be able to cross the worlds and sometimes offer hope and in other stories a deceit. Indeed many of the locations used in this Scottish tale are themselves borders - places where the worlds could meet; be they land and sea; water and soil or forests and cities. Even Tamsin is herself half a twin with the other in the land of the dead. Their is a sense of the numinous in this story that gives it an unsettling sense that events could end well or terrible at any moment increasing the tension as we read along. Freya suddenly finds herself needing to deal all at once with being a career woman; a potential mother and a sibling in a broken family. A simple pool could be either a life saving project of distraction or a portal to another world in an act of love or sacrifice. Wilson weaves these moments in the story and we don’t know if this a tale of light or darkness and it hovers in the spaces of twilight, dusk and dawn that makes it quietly engrossing and on occasion very unnerving. The writing on display to create all of this is absolutely gorgeous and I loved the shifts in tone throughout resulting ultimately on a tale that while not giving us all the answers offers the potential for hope and acceptance.

This is Wilson’s second book and I thought their earlier novel This Is Our Undoing was one of my highlights of last year. Now this one easily becomes one of this year’s best reads. Sublime character work; a wonderful sense of place and crucially displacement creates a spell-bounding tale giving us characters that we get to love and care about or even fear for. Wilson is very much an author to watch. Strongly recommended!