The Animals at Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey

Her narration always has a melancholic tone to it and her portrayal of events is more tangled than Hetty’s, interwoven with sombre musings on her childhood and ongoing night terrors. Lucy is the heiress to the manor, daughter of Major Lockwood, and is dealing with the fallout of her mother’s recent death. Although most of the novel is narrated from Hetty’s perspective, some chapters are written from Lucy Lockwood’s stance. She also has a fractured relationship with her adoptive mother, an aspect of her character that is drawn well and incorporated cleverly.

Hetty is portrayed as headstrong yet vulnerable, fiercely protective of her taxidermied animals, and willing to confront anyone who puts the museum specimens at risk.

Protagonist Hetty Cartwright is a museum director whose new role, at the outbreak of the Second World War, is to accompany her museum’s collection of birds and mammals to the titular Lockwood Manor – a country estate whose family are recovering from their own recent tragedy. Its ornate floral design emblazoned with various birds rising from a stately manor and a focus on the colour blue suggests mystery, despair, femininity, the power of nature and gentry. The Animals at Lockwood Manor‘s beautiful cover art is, contrary to the proverb, an enticing representation of the novel’s thematic content. But why is Lucy so traumatized? Does she know something she’s not telling? And is there any truth to local rumours of ghosts and curses? Protecting her priceless animals from the irascible Lord Lockwood and resentful servants is hard enough, but when a series of mysterious events occur, Hetty begins to suspect someone – or something – is stalking her through the darkened corridors of the gothic mansion.Īs her fears build, Hetty finds herself falling under the spell of Lucy, Lord Lockwood’s beautiful but haunted daughter. But once she and her exhibits arrive at Lockwood Manor, Hetty soon realizes that she’s taken on more than she’d bargained for.

As the Second World War looms, thirty-year-old Hetty Cartwright is tasked with the evacuation and safekeeping of the natural history museum’s famous collection of mammals. Deeply gripping and darkly atmospheric, The Animals at Lockwood Manor is a tale of long-buried secrets and hidden desires by Jane Healey.

The Animals at Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey