Beneath the Shadows - Sara Foster

Beneath the Shadows by Sara Foster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When Grace’s husband, Adam, inherits an isolated North Yorkshire cottage, they leave the bustle of London behind to try a new life. A week later, Adam vanishes without a trace, leaving their baby daughter, Millie, in her stroller on the doorstep. The following year, Grace returns to the tiny village on the untamed heath.  Everyone—the police, her parents, even her best friend and younger sister—is convinced that Adam left her. But Grace, unable to let go of her memories of their love and life together, cannot accept this explanation.  She is desperate for answers, but the slumbering, deeply superstitious hamlet is unwilling to give up its secrets. As Grace hunts through forgotten corners of the cottage searching for clues, and digs deeper into the lives of the locals, strange dreams begin to haunt her. Are the villagers hiding something, or is she becoming increasingly paranoid? Only as snowfall threatens to cut her and Millie off from the rest of the world does Grace make a terrible discovery. She has been looking in the wrong place for answers all along, and she and her daughter will be in terrible danger if she cannot get them away in time.

This story is about Grace, who leaves her city life behind and moves to North Yorkshire with her husband and baby daughter. After a week from their transportation, her husband vanishes without a trace and Grace leaves the North Yorkshire with her daughter... A year later, Grace decides to go back to the cottage once again and while she's trying to figure what she should do with the cottage, she's looking for some answers for the reason why her husband left too. And she's starting to hear some local ghost stories...

Despite the modern outlook, Beneath the Shadows has a gothic atmosphere. I liked the setting of the book (isolated English moors), characters were rich and nicely developed. The story itself was very intriguing. It was tense and eerie. But there are some things that really bother me with this book:

- There was so many unanswered questions.

- I was expecting to see stronger paranormal elements.

- The end was a bit unbelievable for me.

But I found this book to be very well written and almost impossible to put down. It was a good read but could have been much better. I enjoyed this book, and will probably read more by this author.


I received an e-galley from the publisher.