The Shivering Sands - Victoria Holt

A Gothic romance was my last category to read for my 2017 romance challenge with the Unapologetic Romance Readers group.  I'd had The Shivering Sands picked out for quite a while, and saved it for the end of the challenge so I'd at least have one good category to look forward to after drudging through a bunch that I really didn't like.  Someone once told me that Victoria Holt was the queen of Gothic romances, and so it seemed like a good choice--especially because I've already read the most iconic of Gothic romances, Daphne DeMaurier's Rebecca, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

In the wake of the disappearance of her archaeologist sister Roma, Caroline takes on the position of music teacher for the manor in the town in which Roma disappeared.  Going incognito, she hopes to make a living, distance herself from the death of her famous pianist husband, and possibly solve her sister's disappearance, as well.  At Lovat Stacy, she becomes entwined with the three young women who live there, the returned prodigal son Napier who was responsible for his older brother's death, and the other strange and curious residents of both the manor and the surrounding area.  When a second disappearance occurs and Caroline continues to investigate, she finds that she might be the next on the list of those to disappear.  The title refers to the quicksands that lurk off the coast of Lovat Stacy, which have devoured ships whole, leaving only their masts to haunt the inhabits of the manor and town on the shore.

This was definitely a Gothic.  It has a mystery, it has a gloomy atmosphere--the manor by the cold and stormy sea, the burned-out chapel in the copse.  It has the characters who may or may not be guilty of terrible things on pretty much every front.  It has a mad relative lurking in the wings to shake things up and make strangely insightful statements.  It has a heroine with a boring and yet tragic past who pokes her nose into something larger than she, and who ends up deeper than she ever intended to be.  Gothics are not fast-paced action novels and they don't tend to be steamy romances, either.  Consequently, the pacing can be a bit slow, the heroines more introspective than in some other genres.  That was certainly the case here.  The romance is mild, with two love interests representing polar opposite futures vying for Caroline's hand--but it's clear that her mind is made up from the start, even as she fights against it in the name of logic.  There's not a lot of wooing, or embraces, or anything like that.  Instead, the romance is more the "drawn to you and I don't know why" type, but I think it works because it suits the atmosphere of the book.  Caroline is, after all, drawn to Lovat Stacy and its inhabitants and she doesn't quite know why, being as she has already accepted that her sister is dead before she arrives.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book.  It's slower, quieter, but the atmosphere was spot-on, the air of menace lurked over the whole thing, and I didn't manage to figure out who the individual behind the disappearances was.  Of course I knew that quicksand was going to have to be involved in at least one case--the title of the book points that out on its own--but I didn't guess in what way, and the way Holt wrapped it all up was beautifully done as well.  I would definitely read more by this author.

5 stars out of 5.