An Exclusive Guest Post From Caitlin Starling, Author of The Death of Jane Lawrence — Our October Book Club Pick

I grew up on Beauty and the Beast, and Phantom of the Opera was my first Broadway musical. I was somewhere around thirteen when I first read Jane Eyre, and I was hooked.
(I then went on to devour screen adaptations and the musical—did you know there’s a musical? It’s quite good!)
Really, with that lineage, it’s amazing I’d never written a gothic romance before The Death of Jane Lawrence. It took until I saw Crimson Peak, over a decade later, before I was seized with the urge to try my own hand at the genre. Crumbling mansions, mysterious but alluring husbands, complex heroines trapped and struggling against something they’re not sure if they hate or love, torn between what they want and what they would need to sacrifice to get it—I could do that.
Except in most gothic romances, the heroine either tames the beast—takes out his fangs, leashes him, removes the danger—or leaves.
I wanted to try something different.
I wanted to explore the relationship between our heroine and the secrets themselves.
The fear and dread of them, yes, and also the allure inherent in mystery and the taboo. Even more than that, though, is the hunger. A gothic heroine is defined not just by her circumstances, but by the inherent need in her that she finds is met by those circumstances: the darkness that the house and the husband call to. Jane, as a character, embodies a lot of my own insecurities. Am I too much? Too complicated? Too controlling? Too demanding? Are my interests and desires monstrous, or normal? Maybe—so what? I wanted to write a heroine who, when that darkness is laid bare, accepts it—not because of a love interest, but because of herself. Who sees the rotted shadows of her seducer and says I can grow something of my own there.
The Death of Jane Lawrence gave me an opportunity to explore all of it. The operatic heights of a whirlwind romance, the unsettling and sometimes terrifying depths of a relationship betrayed, the intoxication of knowledge and power. And into this very traditional framework of secrets and temptation, I dove into other interests of mine: historical medicine, the development of mathematics, the legacy of esoteric magic in England and America.
The result? A book that is equal parts gore and mystery and longing, wrapped in secrets, and driven forward by one singular heroine.
Who maybe, by the end, needs to be tamed herself.