Published 19th January 2023 by Orenda Books.
From the cover of the book:
Fear blisters through this town like a fever…When Teddy Colne arrives in the small town of Rye, he believes he will be able to settle down and leave his past behind him. Little does he know that fear blisters through the streets like a fever. The locals tell him to stay away from an establishment known only as Berry & Vincent, that those who rub too closely to its proprietor risk a bad end.
Despite their warnings, Teddy is desperate to understand why Rye has come to fear this one man, and to see what really hides behind the doors of his shop.
Ada moved to Rye with her young son to escape a damaged childhood and years of never fitting in, but she’s lonely, and ostracised by the community. Ada is ripe for affection and friendship, and everyone knows it.
As old secrets bleed out into this town, so too will a mystery about a family who vanished fifty years earlier, and a community living on a knife edge.
Teddy looks for answers, thinking he is safe, but some truths are better left undisturbed, and his past will find him here, just as it has always found him before. And before long, it will find Ada too.
***********
Teddy Colne arrives in the quiet little town of Rye, another move in the endless cycle of trying to escape his father's notoriety. He is attracted by a notice in the window of the local antique shop, Berry and Vincent, advertising for an assistant, and is delighted when he is offered the job.
What Teddy does not know is that Berry and Vincent is not your ordinary curio shop. It is certainly full of curious objects, but they are almost entirely of the gruesome and sinister variety. From his first day on the job he is stuck by a weird feeling that there is something not quite right about the shop, or its silent proprietor Mr Vincent. His misgivings are confirmed by almost every other resident in Rye, with their warnings to keep as far away as possible from Berry and Vincent... but something about the shop calls to him, and he finds himself unable to keep away.
Single mum Ada is also a relative newcomer to Rye. Fiercely protective of her six-year-old son Albie, she wears her desperate need for human contact on her sleeve, but finds it difficult to make friends. Their new start in Rye has not been a success, and Ada and Albie remain outsiders. Ada seems to be the only Rye resident willing to enter the unwelcome environs of Berry and Vincent, even though it is a place that scares her.
When Ada meets the new assistant Teddy, these two lonely, vulnerable people strike up an unlikely friendship. Both of them are warmed by the companionship of another human being after their difficult starts in life, but the shadow of Berry and Vincent has them in its grip. Mr Vincent knows only too well how to exploit the weaknesses in others to get what he wants... and he wants them both for his collection.
Ronnie Turner knows how to call on your darkest fears and weave them into a cracking little thriller that evokes all the shady, half-remembered echoes of your worst nightmares. In Berry and Vincent, Turner creates a worthy repository for evil, and at the centre of the lair sits the silent Mr Vincent, who has been playing his wicked little games in Rye for more than fifty years. At first this quiet town promises a haven for the seemingly fragile Teddy and Ada, but there is a darkness that holds Rye and its inhabitants in its sway, and there is a feeling that it has drawn them both here.
Turner enhances the unsettling vibes by using twisted small town dynamics to perfection, playing with the unwillingness of the locals to speak openly about their fears. She inserts half-heard snippets of gossip about the newcomers Ada and Teddy in the text that reinforce their 'otherness', and you have a sense that despite the muttered warnings, the residents of Rye are willing to sacrifice the pair to the wickedness that lies within Berry and Vincent to save themselves.
Turner's writing is delicious. Her use of imagery is stunning, and the over-arching atmosphere of menace gets uncomfortably under your skin like an itch you cannot scratch. I adore how she weaves her themes in this story. I have to be careful of spoilers here, but there is so much that impressed me about the way she uses unresolved childhood trauma, disturbed mental health, and the notion that people can carry within them an inherited capacity for evil that cannot be denied. There is lovely stuff about the media frenzy and disturbing cult following that grows up around the perpetrators of grave crimes, and how this affects their families too. I have to mention here Turner's highly entertaining running gag about Hastings, which gave some humorous relief amongst all the darkness, and really made me chuckle!
This book has every single element that makes it first-class literary horror, combining lashings of Gothic vibes with thought-provoking contemporary themes about identity, and nature vs nurture. It is by far the creepiest book I have read in a good long while, and I loved every spine-tingling second.
So Pretty is available to buy now in paperback and ebook formats, and direct from Orenda Books HERE.
Thank you to Orenda Books for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review, and to Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
Thanks for the blog tour support x
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