The Daughters of Block Island: A Novel

by Christa Carmen

Overview

In this ingenious and subversive twist on the classic gothic novel, the mysterious past of an island mansion lures two sisters into a spiderweb of scandal, secrets, and murder.

Two sisters, strangers since birth yet bound by family secrets, are caught up in a century-old mystery on an isolated island.

After arriving on Block Island to find her birth mother, Blake Bronson becomes convinced she’s the heroine of a gothic novel—the kind that allowed her intermittent escape from a traumatic childhood. How else to explain the torrential rain, the salt-worn mansion known as White Hall, and the restless ghost purported to haunt its halls? But before Blake can discern the novel’s ending, she’s found dead, murdered in a claw-foot tub. The proprietress of White Hall stands accused.

Summoned by a letter sent from Blake before she died, Thalia Mills returns to the island she swore she’d left for good. She finds that Blake wasn’t the first to die at White Hall under suspicious circumstances. Thalia must uncover the real reason for Blake’s demise before the forces conspiring to keep Block Island’s secrets dead and buried rise up to consume her too.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781662512988
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	12/01/2023
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Christa Carmen lives in Rhode Island and is the Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of the short story collection Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked. She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Boston College, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine.

When she’s not writing, she keeps chickens; uses a Ouija board to ghost-hug her dear, departed beagle; and sets out on adventures with her husband, daughter, and bloodhound–golden retriever mix. Most of her work comes from gazing upon the ghosts of the past or else into the dark corners of nature, those places where whorls of bark become owl eyes and deer step through tunnels of hanging leaves and creeping briars only to disappear. Visit her at www.christacarmen.com.

Editorial Reviews

08/21/2023

Carmen’s ambitious debut stumbles in its deployment of gothic tropes. One afternoon, Boston attorney Thalia Mills receives a letter from a woman named Blake Bronson, who provides proof that she is Thalia’s long-lost sister. The letter is addressed from Block Island, a “dark and dismal” place “full of secretive coves and more secretive people” off the coast of Rhode Island that Thalia has stopped visiting for undisclosed reasons. After Googling Blake’s name, Thalia discovers that the woman’s corpse was found in a Block Island bed and breakfast the day after she sent the letter. Determined to learn more about her sister’s life and death, Thalia returns to Block Island to investigate. Along the way, Carmen weaves in flashbacks recounting Blake’s experiences on the island, which are stuffed with grating self-aware winks (“Blake knows she’s in a gothic horror novel the moment she steps off the rain-slicked ferry”) and Scream-style deconstructions of the genre (“If a storm descends, remain in your bedroom!”). The timelines alternate until Thalia makes some shocking discoveries. Carmen clearly reveres her influences, but she fails to conjure a convincingly creepy atmosphere, and her stabs at metafictional humor fall flat. This misses the mark. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

11/03/2023

DEBUT Blake Bronson arrives on Block Island in search of her birth mother. Staying at the historic White Hall mansion on the island and recovering from alcohol addiction, she feels as if she's the heroine of her own tragic gothic novel. There are secret passageways, torrential downpours, and ghosts—but are the ghosts real? Before Blake can discover the truth, she's murdered, but not before mailing a letter to the sister she never met, Thalia Mills. When Thalia returns home to the island after a decade's absence, she must unwind the mystery behind Blake's death to try to avoid the same fate. Given the novel's mysterious mansion setup, horror fans may be disappointed by the lack of terror and atmosphere. VERDICT While there are numerous references here to horror icons such as Shirley Jackson and gothic novels, including Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, they do not fully resonate with the characters of Carmen's debut novel (after the short story collection Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked: Thirteen Stories), making it read like a disjointed collection of tropes.—Alana Quarles

Library Journal

2023-10-07
Two Boston women pay separate yet equally perilous off-season visits to Block Island several fateful months apart.

By the time attorney Thalia Mills gets a letter from Blake Bronson informing her that Blake is the sister she never knew existed, Blake is already dead. She was found with her wrists slit in one of the claw-footed bathtubs in White Hall, the venerable B&B/vineyard/winery kept by Aileen Searles, where Blake, a barely recovering abuser of alcohol and opioids, had gone to confront Maureen Mills, the mother who gave her up for adoption soon after her birth and then pretended she’d never been born. A long flashback to Blake’s visit shows her preparing for the confrontation by spending time with the longtime boyfriend of Maureen’s sister, Fiona, New Shoreham selectman Martin Dempsey, who owns the aptly named restaurant Martin’s Above the Rocks, and his competitor Timmy Graham, of Graham’s Resort, and fighting off their advances. All the while, Blake is falling under the spell of White Hall, which she compares to the haunted settings of The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Rebecca. When the local cops decide that Blake’s apparent suicide was actually murder and place a suspect under arrest, Thalia determines to retrace the footsteps of the sister she never met. The convoluted mystery, in which everyone acts guilty of something because pretty much everyone is, is repeatedly upstaged by what Carmen, in an unusually candid and illuminating afterword, calls her decision to go for “gothic meta,” compelling both her heroines and her villains to play by the rules of the genre even as they recognize their creaky artifice.

Great fun for readers who’ve done their background reading and want to try a Gothic Plus.

Kirkus Reviews

Great fun for readers…” —Kirkus Reviews

“This compelling and atmospheric thriller pays homage to classic gothic novels while still adding something fresh to the beloved genre. An easy sell to fans of the Brontës but also those who enjoy the creepy, psychological suspense of Simone St. James.” —Booklist

“Christa Carmen celebrates the gothic in this twisty, spooky tour de force that ticks all the boxes with panache and style! This love child of Barbara Michaels and John Harwood has written a chilling page-turner guaranteed to keep you up all night. The Daughters of Block Island is a top-notch read!” —Nancy Holder, Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, Horror Writers Association

“I have been a Christa Carmen fan since reading her collection, Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked. I knew she could tell a hell of a short story and her novel, The Daughters of Block Island, does not disappoint. The mystery leaves the reader feeling like they are trying to escape a twisted haunted dollhouse without knowing what is real or imagined. Lovers of gothic fiction should pick up this book that contains a wealth of nods to the genre, but also discusses personal horrors like addiction, abuse, and mental health.” —V. Castro, Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of Goddess of Filth and The Queen of the Cicadas

“Christa Carmen’s The Daughters of Block Island is a tantalizing love letter to gothic fiction, imbued with rain-soaked atmosphere and scandal-ridden mysteries that unravel to reveal the dark beating heart at the center of a mysterious island mansion. Readers of gothic novels will delight in nods to classic works and the way the past continues to haunt the present in White Hall. Filled with intrigue, this book is the perfect addition to your bookshelf, tucked in beside Radcliffe and du Maurier!” —Jo Kaplan, author of It Will Just Be Us

“With its lush and exquisite language, Christa Carmen’s The Daughters of Block Island honors and explores the great gothic novels of the past, but here the rules are rewritten. Be prepared to find yourself in White Hall’s spider’s web.” —Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of Children of Chicago

“The Daughters of Block Island offers an atmospheric, harrowing plight of ghosts and murder. Christa Carmen paints an island of vivid and unsettling imagery, where every claustrophobic twist leads deeper into an underworld of dread. A compelling mystery, with arresting characters ready to engulf you.” —Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of The Worm and His Kings

“Christa Carmen has long been one of my favorite horror authors, and The Daughters of Block Island is further proof that she’s among the most important voices in the genre today. A clever inversion and exploration of gothic tropes, this is a debut novel unlike any other. A true macabre masterpiece, this book is a must-read.” —Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of The Rust Maidens and Reluctant Immortals

“In The Daughters of Block Island Christa Carmen cleverly combines classic elements of the Victorian literary canon in a fast-paced island intrigue that is atmospheric and enigmatic. A tale to rival Ann Radcliffe’s own The Mysteries of Udolpho, told in exquisite prose and embracing contemporary themes, Carmen’s debut novel is a triumph of the modern gothic genre.” —Lee Murray, five-time Bram Stoker Awards-winning author of Grotesque: Monster Stories

“The Daughters of Block Island immerses the reader in the inexorable, chilling, uneasy atmosphere one hopes for in a Gothic novel. Classically genre-aware while still being inventive, Carmen has a compelling voice no matter which of the sisters is taking the lead. Generational trauma, true villainy, tragedy, loss and resilience collide in a rushing tide of a powerfully wrought story.” —Leanna Renee Hieber, award-winning author of Strangely Beautiful and A Haunted History of Invisible Women

“The gothic horror novel just received a massive shot of adrenaline to its bleak-but-beautiful-heart…a stunning novel that arrives in the final month of the year, just in time for the calendar’s longest nights of darkness. In this debut novel, Carmen doesn’t attempt to top the classics; instead, she subverts them in a unique manner. She embraces the tropes that made the subgenre what it is and forges an enthralling tale of two sisters, a strange town, and a cast of characters that would make the masters proud…If this is any indication of what Christa Carmen can bring into the world, readers will be smiling under candlelight for years to come. An exceptional new talent has arrived.” —Cemetary Dance

From the Publisher