"She knew in her heart that she had not deserved what the man had done to her, but still she felt angry and yes, guilty. Guilty for being outside where he could have found her, and guilty for not fighting harder, for letting it happen. He had taken her choices away, claimed her maidenhood. Shamed her, hurt her and yes, bereaved her.
She would never forgive that."
The Witch's Stone is a fabulous Gothic novel about an old country estate in Northumberland that sits close to a crumbling old chapel. I would describe this novel as a revenge tale and I do love a good bit of payback! It is a classic timeslip format with two main protagonists, Jess in the current day and Eliza in the 1800s.
When Jess is asked by an old school friend to take part in an archaeological dig around the chapel ruins in her home village, she can't wait to get started, but almost as soon as she arrives she begins to have strange experiences on site. Shadows flicker in and out of her sightline, a woman in white drifts across the landscape and her old pal, Nate is acting rather odd. Add to this the fact that she bumps into her ex-husband, Matt, who has also been involved in the restoration of the hotel where she is staying, the former country home of Eliza, and Jess's emotions are heightened to say the least.
Near the chapel ruins is an old standing stone, known as the Witch's Stone and local legend states that to draw blood by the stone is to draw out the witch. As Jess dives deeper into her historic research she suspects that there is more to this legend than superstitious fancy, so she determines to find out more about it. Meanwhile, Nate has unearthed an artifact that seems to have a strange hold over him that he cannot explain.
Back in the past, Eliza is a young woman who has been extremely traumatised. She is fragile and her broken bones are barely healed, yet she insists on riding across the moors to the chapel every chance she gets. Even locking her in doesn't work, as she climbs through the window. She knows that she is still mending and needs to rest, yet she is driven to the moors by her wild nature and a yearning for her true love.
The problem is, Eliza has a deep-seated form of amnesia that is linked to her trauma, meaning that she cannot actually remember what happened to her, and no-one likes to speak of her accident. Basically, she has what today would be called PTSD Amnesia. I think this is the aspect of the book that I enjoyed the most, because I can relate to it. This is such a tricky subject to write about, because if you get it wrong it can come off as being a bit of a parody, or melodramatic. Perhaps that is the reason it is a topic that is rarely covered in novels, because it carries the weight of author responsibility and there is the obligation to do right by the people such as myself, who experience this condition, showing their struggle authentically, without turning it into a weakness. Its a very fine line to tread.
I am pleased to say that Kirsty Ferry has done a great job in this regard, illustrating Eliza's memory loss, flashbacks and subsequent confusion, despair and embarrassment with tremendous compassion and respect for the subject matter. It would have been easy, given her back-story and the era in which Eliza's story takes place, to make the character some kind of feeble invalid, but Eliza is strong, vibrant, rebellious and very independent. She just doesn't recall her recent past in the way that other people do.
The author also illustrates the frustration of those around Eliza, as her family members fail to understand and have little patience for her memory loss, flashbacks, emotional outbursts and so on. Again, this is something that people with memory issues face on a regular basis, as people prefer to think that it is something that is played out for personal amusement, or as an attention seeking tactic. It is neither. It is a very real, very confusing and debilitating condition to live with. Kirsty Ferry highlights all of this, without making the memory issues into a disability and I applaud her for that. Its a highly skilled piece of writing in this regard and the work of a consummate author.
Eliza's past comes back to her in fragments that are all jumbled up and which she cannot make any sense of, or transform into a cohesive whole in her mind. She is told that she is mad, which in the 1800s was a very dangerous label for a woman to have, as women were frequently thrown into asylums for normal hormonal things like post-natal depression and menopausal tantrums! This was a time when women were the property of their closest male relative or husband, and he could do as he pleased with her, even incarcerating her without any medical examination at all - simply on his own word that she is mad, and therefore, as far as society was concerned, to all intents and purposes, she was! This is hinted at in the novel and there is the possibility of Eliza's freedom being even more curtailed and threatened altogether.
As the two strands of the story weave in and out of one another, you are left with a novel that tackles some very difficult and dark material, with a simmering undercurrent of Gothic tension and witchy shenanigans. The atmosphere is strong and steady, building to a climax at the chapel and a satisfying dénouement. This is a novel of trauma, dominance, injury, mental health struggles, memory loss and amnesia, but it is also one of dance cards, romance, true love and wild pony rides across the moors. It has echoes of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and it is just as dark and gritty!
I have been entralled by The Witch's Stone and if you like the novels of Barbara Erskine, Susannah Kearsley or C. J. Cooke, then you might like this one. A word of caution though, this novel does deal with some very heavy topics such as amnesia, drug dependency and sexual assault. Its a cracking read, perfect for the autumn months and spooky season, but not one for the faint hearted!
Serene Blessings
Marie x
AD: This novel was sent to me back in March by the publisher, Boldwood, for the purposes of review. It was published on the 4th June 2026 and it is available now in all formats.