THE GIRL FROM RAWBLOOD by Catriona Ward – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Girl From Rawblood by Catriona Ward
Published by Poisoned Pen Press on March 7 2023
Genres: Adult, Gothic, historical, Horror
Pages: 368
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: A sweeping family saga dripping with gothic atmosphere, The Girl From Rawblood is both a love story and a tragedy, filled with dread and shocking revelations.

“When I try to think of Rawblood, to draw it with words, a muffling whiteness comes. I can’t describe it any more than I can my own bones, my eyes. It simply is. It hangs in the foreground of everything like blindness.”

The Girl From Rawblood was originally published in 2015 (and won a British Fantasy Award in 2016) and was Catriona Ward’s first book, and I’m very glad it’s been rereleased, otherwise I might never have read it. This was an unexpectedly emotional read for me, reducing me to tears at the end. I suspect a lot of that has to do with Ward’s lush prose, which brought this grim, gothic tale to life, an emotional story full of interesting characters who find themselves in dire situations. This isn’t a happy tale by any means, and it took me a solid week to read, even though the page count is fairly low. Ward has written a dense, atmospheric story about several intertwined families and how they are linked together by a curse. If you’re a fan of gothic classics like Wuthering Heights or Frankenstein, you will probably love this as well.

The story is told in multiple timelines and roughly spans the years between the mid-1800s and 1919. We first meet Iris Villarca in 1910 when she is eleven years old. Iris and her father live in seclusion at Rawblood, an old, decrepit mansion that has been in the Villarca family for years. Iris has a friend named Tom Gilmore, but her father Alonso has raised Iris to follow a strict set of rules that discourage interaction with other people. According to him, the Villarcas are cursed with a disease called horror autotoxicus, a wasting illness that ends in death, brought on by high emotions. Alonso has forbidden Iris to spend time with Tom, her only friend, but she manages to sneak away and see Tom despite her father’s warnings. The two become close over the years, but Tom eventually goes to war, leaving Iris to a terrible fate.

The story then jumps back in time to 1881. Alonso welcomes Charles Danforth to Rawblood, where the two men begin a series of secret medical experiments revolving around antibodies in the blood. Alonso has an ulterior motive for their experiments, although he doesn’t reveal it to Charles until much later.

In other timelines we meet more members of the Villarca and Gilmore families, including Iris’s mother Meg and Alonso’s mother Mary, both who have the “sight” and can predict future events. Tying all these time periods and family members together is the Rawblood ghost, a woman in white who is closely connected to the family curse and the real source of Alonso’s fictitious horror autotoxicus. 

Ward includes a family tree at the beginning of the book, which came in very handy as I was reading. There are many connections among the characters which aren’t apparent at first, but eventually the reader learns about the surprising ways they are related, both by blood and circumstance. At first it was jarring to jump from one character to the next. I loved reading about Iris, and I thought the story was going to focus on her life. But although she is the “girl from Rawblood” in the title, there are many more characters who play important roles in the story, even if it doesn’t seem that way at first. For a debut, I thought this book was brilliantly crafted. Ward unveils secrets as if peeling back the skin of an onion, revealing each horrifying layer with meticulous skill.

The supernatural elements are subtle. The “ghost” is merely an idea at first. Only certain people can see her, and she’s more legend and rumor than anything else. Because of the rumors, servants don’t stay long at Rawblood and the townspeople avoid the Villarcas whenever possible. The appearance of the ghost can only mean one thing: death will soon follow. There is a horrifying twist at the end that reveals a connection between Iris and the ghost, but you have to be paying attention to the clues along the way.

The story has so many emotional elements. Ward brings the horrors of WWI to life, as boys and men are forced to go to war. In Tom’s case, his father has died and he has no where to go, and so he enlists, even though it means leaving Iris behind. There’s also a harrowing section that takes place in a mental asylum, where Iris winds up after a tragic event at Rawblood. The scenes between Alonso and Charles are both fascinating and horrifying. At one point the two men decide to play a game of sorts, where they secretly dose each other with drugs. Alonso develops a life-long addition to opiates because of this, and it was heartbreaking to see how it affected his life. Ward has clearly done lots of research into this time period, which by the way was not a good time to be a woman.

Despite all the drama and sorrow, though, The Girl From Rawblood is also a love story. Iris and Tom fall in love, although their relationship is ultimately doomed. Meg is determined that her fourth pregnancy will yield a child, and her love for her unborn baby is fierce. Even Alonso’s and Charles’s relationship veers towards love, as does the unlikely friendship between Mary Hopewell, Iris’s grandmother, and her traveling companion Hephzibah Brigstocke. And probably the strongest example is Alonso’s love for his daughter. He will do anything to save Iris from the family curse, even if that means hiding her away from the world.

Readers who don’t mind a slower paced, emotionally charged story will find a lot to love in The Girl From Rawblood. Highly recommended.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.