Book Review

His Dark Kiss by Eve Silver

Before I ever read a romance novel, I devoured Gothics by Phyllis Whitney and Victoria Holt. When I was probably around twelve I found them on a bookshelf in our basement, and I think over the course of one summer I read everything both authors had written.

Gothic romances were and are the perfect blend of the creepy and the sexy. Usually set on a crumbling estate, the innocent heroine shows up (sometimes as a governess or poor relation or new wife) to meet the dark and mysterious lord of the manor/castle/whatever. These books were always told only from the heroine’s POV as she tried to piece together spooky happenings (ghosts, curses, diaries left behind by mysteriously dead former wives) while simultaneously fearing the hero and also wanting to bone him.

Sadly, there was no boning in Victoria Holt’s novels, but Eve Silver’s  Dark Gothic series is here to rectify that. His Dark Kiss is the second book in the series, but totally works as a stand-alone read.

Emma Parrish arrives at Manorbrier Castle to act as governess to the son of her late cousin, Delia. Rumors abound that Lord Anthony Craven, Delia’s husband, was responsible for her death, but practical Emma dismisses this all as “stuff and nonsense.”

When she gets to Manorbrier, however, she realizes some seriously spooky shit is going on. First of all, the previous two governesses died under mysterious circumstances.

She overhears her student, adorable plot moppet Nicky, discussing her with the cook:

“I haven’t met her yet. But if she is like Miss Strubb or Miss Rust or…” The child shivered and hesitated briefly before saying the woman’s name in a hushed whisper. “…Mrs. Winter, then I think I should not like to meet her at all. And certainly if she is like Mrs. Winter, then she should go away and never come back. Papa could send her off in a pine box. Just like he sent Mrs. Winter.”

A pine box? Emma stood frozen, digesting the implications of all she had overheard. Clearly the child was frightened, and had quite possibly been ill-treated by his previous governesses. That he had suffered was a sad thing to be sure, but his trust could be gained with patience and love. So she worried not overmuch as to Nicky’s opinion of her, but the mention of a pine box for the unknown Mrs. Winter gave her pause. There was only one type of pine box he could mean.

A chill crept across Emma’s skin. It seemed that Mrs. Winter had left Manorbrier in a coffin, and by the child’s account, it was Lord Anthony who had put her there.

One of the things that’s tricky in a Gothic is making the hero a menacing and potentially murderous figure, while simultaneously making him desirable to the heroine and reader. Like a true Gothic hero, Anthony is darkly mysterious and handsome, and has a penchant for wandering around his castle with his shirt unbuttoned but tucked in. The Gothic hero sometimes intersected with (or was a precursor to) the vampire hero, so if you’re confused as to how he could be appealing, think about Spike or Angel or whoever Sarah McLachlan was singing about in “Building a Mystery” (ah, the nineties. Good times).

Emma doesn’t think Anthony is a murderer. He’s a devoted and loving father to Nicky, and he’s also very kind to those in his employ (when a maid gets pregnant out of wedlock, he keeps her on and also pays for the care of her sick mother). But there’s definitely something fucked up going on at Manorbrier. For one, all the other servants seem creepy and tight lipped about everything, like they’re all in on some huge conspiracy. Then there’s the mysterious Round Tower that Emma is explicitly forbidden from entering.

One day Emma is enjoying the fresh air when she sees the coachman, Griggs, carrying a bundle into the Round Tower:

From the bottom of the bundle dangled a human hand, the fingers curled like talons, the skin wrinkled and pale save for a terrible blackened lesion that marred the flesh, the center glistening wetly in the sun. Emma gasped and lurched away. ‘Twas not just any body, but a terrible, frightening thing riddled with disease.

Taking another involuntary step backward, she held up one hand, palm forward. Such a futile gesture aimed at warding off the horror that confronted her. She swallowed against the bile that crawled up her throat as frozen talons of true horror gouged her heart.

Griggs looked down.

“His Lordship likes ’em fresh,” he said. “Says it’s best for the harvest.” With a grunt, he hefted his morbid parcel, turned his back on her, and disappeared into the tower.

Now, any sane person would be like:

Anna from Frozen says Uhh...okay. Well, I'm gonna go...

Not the Gothic heroine, though. The Gothic heroine is gonna wait until midnight, put on her flimsiest nightgown, grab a candle, and go figure this shit out.

One of the things this novel does really well is keep Anthony a darkly intriguing figure while also making him super bone-able. It’s a tough chord to strike, balancing fear and desire together, and going too far in any direction will ruin the mood so to speak.

Emma is illegitimate and acutely aware of what an affair with the lord of the castle could mean for someone in her position. That said, she and Anthony are drawn to each other with a delicious intensity.  And the sex scenes in this book are hella hot.

One of the things that was a little frustrating, but also frankly a convention of the genre, is that much of the conflict could have been solved by Emma and Anthony talking. “Hey, why is Griggs carrying bodies into the Round Tower?” would be a pretty reasonable question to ask. Emma doesn’t often explicitly voice her concerns and when she does Anthony answers her in a vague and roundabout way. It keeps the mystery going, but it’s irksome.

That mystery is resolved nicely though and the clues as to what the hell is really going are peppered throughout the book in a way that the reader can solve it if they want to.

Now I do want to add a trigger warning. There’s a scene where a woman is in labor and in distress, and there is a frank conversation with the physician about performing an abortion (and how it would be performed) in order to save her life. This could be upsetting for anyone who had experienced something similar.

His Dark Kiss is also fairly creepy. It didn’t give me nightmares, but the horror element is sufficiently explicit that it might freak out more sensitive readers. Since I read creepy shit all the time, it didn’t bother me much.

If you’ve never read a Gothic and want to try one, or are just looking for seasonally spooky read, His Dark Kiss would be a good place to start.

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His Dark Kiss by Eve Silver

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  1. Lora says:

    Ok, I’m a sensitive reader but…Victoria Holt, Jane Aiken Hodge–my middle school catnip. Give me an preternaturally beautiful but stupidly curious governess and her yearning for a man who may or may not have killed his wife and I am all TAKE. My. MONEY!!!

  2. Ren Benton says:

    Dark Desires, the first book in this series, is permafree, so it may be an even better place to begin your gothic romance journey!

    In which the tragically unfortunate new maid falls for her physician employer, who may or mayn’t be Jack the Ripper. Dr. Death uses her artistic skills for his cadaver diagrams, so again, if you’re sensitive to that kind of thing, fair warning.

  3. Katty says:

    @Ren Benton, thank you so much for this! Elyse’s review sounded intriguing but I’m not at all sure if this genre (subgenre?) is for me, so having a chance to try it out for free is just great!

  4. Amy says:

    I grew up reading Victoria Holt as well-to this day The Silk Vendetta is still one that I remember well. Great review I will have to check this one out!

  5. Emily C says:

    So glad to see this review! The first book, Dark Desires, is free for kindle at Amazon and I’ve had it in the TBR folder for awhile and sort of forgotten about it. I think it may be my next read for the SBTB goodreads challenge, a perfect gothic pick for October.

  6. MirandaB says:

    I was a huge gothic fan when I was a teenager. Barbara Michaels (particularly Sons of the Wolf), Jill Tattersall, Aola Vandergriff, so much crazy… 🙂

  7. Kate M says:

    Oh, man, Gothics used to be my JAM. I read the authors already mentioned and Dorothy Eden and, a particular favorite, Elsie Lee. I think the only ones still out in a bookcase are the Barbara Micheals and Elsie Lee books. The rest have gone away.

    I’m definitely checking out Dark Desires and Dark Kiss

  8. Mina Lobo says:

    I heart all things goth(ic); extra points for sexy intercourse! Loved your review, totally gotta have this and buying in 10—9—8…

  9. Anna says:

    „The Gothic heroine is gonna wait until midnight, put on her flimsiest nightgown, grab a candle, and go figure this shit out.“ Still snorting with laughter. Thank you for this and the great review. Will go and click buy now….

  10. BellaInAus says:

    Our family pays out on so many movies. “No, wait, what’s he doing?!? He should be wearing a skimpy nightie and going down that dark cellar at night. Doesn’t he know anything?”

  11. PamG says:

    All of the above plus Madeleine Brent! I live for the day that Brent’s work comes out in ebook format. Sigh. . .

  12. Nikki says:

    This may be a new genre for me! I’m in a reading rut right now and nothing is catching my interest
    Will give this a try tonight! Thanks all!!

  13. Hera says:

    Madeleine Brent!!!!! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

    I bought all her books off of ebay a few years ago. I would buy the ebooks in a heartbeat. I still want to run away and be a trapeze artist thanks to her.

  14. Laura says:

    DNF – Nicky was creepy, the hero was creepy and the heroine was a heavy breathing, can’t-keep-her-eyes-off her boss dolt. Sorry.

  15. MinaKelly says:

    I found the first book in this series very frustrating. Every time I started to enjoy it the author threw in something that threw me out of the plot, like late Victorian doctors still being into the four humours. I can live with a little historical inaccuracy, especially in a book that’s using genre conventions to be deliberately obscure about when it’s set, but every time it happened it was there to make a point about how super special the hero and heroine were compared with their peers. If you have to make the peers cartoon stereotypes to elevate the main characters, it’s a sign the main characters are lacking. I made it to the end, but the further I got the more I was double checking every detail because I’d stopped trusting the author to tell me a story.

  16. Hazel says:

    I’ve just tried the first book, and only made it half way through. @MinaKelly, in addition to those inconsistencies, I thought the heroine was beyond TSTL; how many times was she going to sneak downstairs in the middle of the night and go to her boss’s library to look for a book? When she’s supposed to be a servant? And when she sees something scary every time? And when was the story going to move beyond ‘Oh he’s so beautiful, but is that blood on his hands?’

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