A Slow and Secret Poison ☠️
- The_Secret_Bookreview
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
By Carmella Lowkis.
A Slow and Secret Poison is a richly atmospheric book that invites you into a crumbling manor filled with grief, superstition and the slow unravelling of old family secrets.
Set in 1922 in the southwest of England, it follows Vee Morgan, a young woman fleeing a past she would rather keep buried. When she takes a position as gardener at Harfold Manor, she believes she has found a quiet fresh start. Instead, she steps straight into a house steeped in sorrow and stories that refuse to stay silent.
Harfold Manor is the heart of the book. Once grand, now fading, it feels heavy with its own history. Rooms hold the ghosts of memories, and the estate seems to breathe with a strange and lonely life of its own.
The last surviving member of the family, Lady Arabella Lascy, haunts its corridors. Vee is drawn to her at once. Arabella is eccentric, fragile and entirely consumed by the idea of a curse that she believes has killed her relatives one after another and is coming for her next. Her only hope, she says, lies in the blessing once granted by a creature known as the dancing hare, the namesake of the house.
As the story moves forward, Vee is pulled deeper into Arabella’s orbit. What begins as fascination grows into something darker and more entangled. Their relationship is uneasy and strangely tender at first, with Arabella watching Vee work and stitching embroidered portraits of her in quiet acts of devotion.
Yet the book does not settle into a soft romance. Instead, it becomes a tense study of obsession, vulnerability and power. Both women carry secrets, and both are shaped by the rigid expectations of class and reputation, though only one is protected by them.
The book excels at its gothic elements. There is the expected decay and candlelit gloom, but Lowkis uses these details to reveal character rather than simply decorate the setting. The slow tension, the sense of things unsaid, the feeling that the house itself knows more than it should. Even the animals play a part. Mutton the dog and Reacher’s finch offer fragile points of comfort and connection in a world where trust is scarce. There is a moment involving the dog that is heartbreaking, but it also marks an essential turn in understanding the characters and the cost of their choices.
What stands out is the thread of quiet menace woven through the book. Vee’s past in Cardiff is not what readers may expect, and the reveal adds weight to everything that comes after. Arabella’s fear of the curse becomes a way of speaking about the rot that runs through her family’s history. Class divides, privilege, and the blurred lines between guilt and survival all come sharply into focus.
A Slow and Secret Poison delivers exactly what a gothic book should. Suspense that creeps rather than shouts, atmosphere so thick you can almost taste it, and a pair of women bound by secrets that threaten to ruin them both. Dark, intricate and compelling, it is a book that lingers.
Thank you to Lucy and the team at Transworld for sending out a copy of the book! The book is published today and available to purchase.
