Monthly Miscellany: A Spooky RIP Round-Up #RIPXXI!

My October Miscellany has a distinctly creepy vibe as I had a few reads lined up for the RIP Challenge, which I have been loosely taking part in since September. This month gave me two really excellent reads and two mediocre reads where I could have done with a few more scares!

Night Babies by Lucie McKnight Hardy

I loved Lucy McKnight Hardy’s short story collection Dead Relatives, so I was keen to read her most recent novel, Night Babies. Astrid, a painter up against an exhibition deadline, is forced out of her flooded home and retreats with her husband Kit to a renovated church on the Brecon Beacons estate of her wealthy schoolfriend Flora. But there’s something evil lurking beneath the reservoir beside the church, as well as in the shared past of the two women, dating back to a school trip to Florence that went horribly wrong.

Hardy writes brilliantly about art and the often uncomfortable conflict between creativity and motherhood, while Astrid is a refreshingly abrasive protagonist who refuses to be particularly likeable or accommodating. The landscape is wonderfully evoked, its beauty and isolation adding to the growing sense ...