Title: The Woman In The Mirror
Author: Jessica Johnson
Year: 2022
Genre: Horror, Supernatural
The Woman In The Mirror is the debut novel by Jessica Johnson which was selected for my Zoom book club – if you are interested in joining the club then please drop me a comment down below and let me know.
Abi has always been able to see ghosts as a child, but when she buys her new house suddenly she is able to see visions again. She quickly realises that the visions are of her great-grandmother Katerina who disappeared in the 1860’s in mysterious circumstances, along with her son and her family nanny, Helen, who disappeared shortly afterwards.
As Abi starts to investigate she discovers more and more horrific incidents happening – Will she be able to iuncover the truth? What happened to Katerina? Why was she sent to an asylum? What happened to her son and the nanny?
This book is a very spooky ride with a very interesting mystery that is set up at the start. Abi is a great lead character and the encounters she has with the ghosts immediately hook you in and make you want to find out more. I also really liked the supporting characters, all of which are down to earth and feel like real people.
Johnson also does a great job of slowly unravelling the mystery as we learn more and mroe about Katerina and her situation and we start to sympathise with her and her plight and each time Abi and Ben came up with a theory it seemed like new information would turn it on it’s head again which kept me reading and wanting to find out more.
I was also impressed with the entire sequence set in the asylum – often in horror or supernatural books things that are meant to be spooky don’t always come across that way but Johnson does a fantastic job of maintaining the tension with all sorts of strange and weird things going on in that entire sequence.
If I do have one critique with the mystery element, a lot of the information comes out from Abi and Ben doing internet searches which to me wasn’t completely believable given how Katarina was meant to live in the 1860’s and it sometimes seemed a bit too convenient how they found out the information, but it is done this way so the book doesn’t lose tension but maybe if they had gone to ana rchive or a library it would be more convincing.
Overall though for a spooky read I would definitely recommend this one and I also look forward to more releases from this author in the future. If you have read this book, let me know your thoughts down in the comments what you think.
