Crimson Peak by Nancy Holder

When her heart is stolen by a seductive stranger, a young woman is swept away to a house atop a mountain of blood-red clay: a place filled with secrets that will haunt her forever.

Between desire and darkness, between mystery and madness, lies the truth behind Crimson Peak. From acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro. @goodreads

MY REVIEW:

  5 STARS 

 


Love.
Death.
Ghosts.
The world was drenched in blood.
A scarlet fog veiled the killing ground, then dripped down through the greedy, starved mineshafts into the tortured vats of claret clay that bubbled and gasped on the filthy, bone-white tile. Crimson earth seeped back up through the walls of mud. Allerdale Hall was ringed with brilliant red---a stain that clawed toward Edith's bare feet.
But that was the least of her troubles.
Hell's own child was coming for her. Implacable, unstoppable, a creature fueled by madness and rage, that had maimed and murdered and would kill again, unless Edith struck first. But she was weak, coughing up blood and stumbling and this monster had already claimed other lives--other souls--stronger and heartier than hers.
Snowflakes blinded Edith's swollen cornflower-blue eyes; red droplets specked her golden hair. Her right cheek had been sliced open; the hem of her gauzy nightgown had soaked up the blood, rot, and the gore.



I saw this movie a few days ago and had to buy the book and I am going to buy the movie when the price goes down. I loved them both, I don't care what anyone else thinks, they made me happy because they were so good and creepy. Plus, I wanted to smack some sense into people!

All Edith Cushing wanted to do was to become a writer, but she was turned down because she is a woman. And it was her understanding the man that turned her down believed that women should only write about love which infuriated Edith as she wants to write what she wants. She is a woman without means as her father, Carter Cushing, was very wealthy as he was a builder of beautiful buildings. Unfortunately, this caught the attention of one Sir Thomas Sharpe and he began to woo her. YES WOO!


This was frowned upon by Edith's father and her long time family friend since she was a child, Dr. Alan McMichael. Alan was secretly in love with Edith, but he was too close of a friend for her to be interested. Edith's father and Alan didn't think something was quite right with Mr. Sharpe and they were right!



Edith can also see ghosts which would be cool in a way. When Edith was child and her mother died her mother visited her one night (scaring her to death of course) to warn her....

But seconds later, as she turned on her side, she went absolutely rigid with shock. She felt the decaying hand wrap around her shoulder, smelled the damp earth of the grave, and heard the desiccated lips, a hoarse distortion of the voice she had known better than her own as it whispered in her ear:
"My child, when the time comes, beware of Crimson Peak."



If Edith only knew what that meant at the time! :-(

Edith's father paid off Mr. Sharpe and his sister Lucille so they would go away and leave Edith be....but.... that didn't really work. They made a show of leaving and Lucille did head back to Allerdale Hall at one point, but Thomas didn't leave without Edith. AND, Edith's father was brutally murdered. They didn't call it murder at the time but Alan had his reservations about the final report. None of it mattered for Thomas got what he wanted.

Sir Thomas's arm was around her, which would have been a breach of propriety had they not been affianced. It was all too soon, under circumstances too horrible to comprehend, and perhaps he was looking through the prism of his jealousy, but when he regarded the way Sir Thomas held Edith, it seemed that the man was determined to keep her in his grasp rather than to ease her suffering. She looked trapped, not protected.
Then Sir Thomas noticed his gaze and held it, steadily. It was an unspoken duel. Edith saw none of it. Alan knew that he had already lost, and so he tipped his hat, as one would do under such a circumstance to salute a grieving relative of the deceased. Encumbered by umbrella and fiance, Sir Thomas as unable to return the gesture, and so, inclined his head.



So now it's welcome to your nightmare my darling bride!



and nightmares Edith did have at her new home..living nightmares. She had a few different ghosts peeping in on her and checking out the new bride.



and a nice little tip, if you hear things in the hall or other places, don't go looking!

"You silly dog," she chided, but there was a quaver in her voice. She was fighting to stay brave. "How did you get locked out?"
She reached her hand around the knob and pulled--
--as, behind her, the little dog barked. She startled, then turned to see it--
--and behind the door, a linen closet, not a room; and crowded in, something, something, something crimson--
--whimpered; it whimpered and scratched incessantly.
Of course it saw; of course it knew what it was:
Rolling eyes, a clacking jaw, scarlet fear, a ruby-red woman shape, scratching with fingers of bone. A trail of brilliant, fresh blood floated up toward the top of the closet, defying space just as the monstrous apparition defied time.
But it wanted, need to be seen; it was wild for her to turn her head back from the dog. However, she did not turn. She did not see. But the door slammed shut.



All the while another ghost was watching the whole thing and thinking things in its head. Creepy! Edith pulls the door back open and finds a closet with nothing in it but containers that had recordings on them, these come out later in the book and the movie.

And then... when you think your over the closet thing....
From the floor, pulling itself out, a specter of purest scarlet, a grotesque revenant, emerged painfully, struggling, sucking its essence through the floor: the spine first, like taffy, then the back of the head while an arm withdrew as from a viscous, sticky sludge. Bright red bones stretched in unnatural shapes, weirdly, wrongly jointed; the hand slapped down as if for leverage, purchase. Every part of it red; the second arm raising upward, digging itself out. And as the bride stared, paralyzed in horror, it began to crawl toward her. Faceless, scuttling. Implacable, coming to her, at her, for her.



The dog had the right idea and cut a rug out of there!


.
At some point, Edith starts to realize that things are just not right in the place. Her husband acts weird, her sister-in-law acts weird and she finds out that there were three other brides and they were all killed and she is being poisoned as well. She starts trying to make her escape.

Meanwhile, Alan can't get the idea out of his head that things are wrong. He talks to Edith's lawyer and they both agree, also a hired man brings him some old papers showing where the Sharpe's mother was brutally killed. He then decides he's going to get Edith. She has already had papers sent over to sign all of her money into helping Thomas with his home and business, we see what's going on now


When Alan gets there he finds Edith with a broken leg from trying to escape the horrible Sharpe's. But... Thomas has started to have feelings for Edith and tries to help, his sister was the killer all along. She stabs Alan and then Thomas pretends to stab him again while whispering some things to him. Edith makes a mad dash away, Alan gets hidden, and crazy ass Lucille kills Thomas. Yeah, she's a nut job. But she gets hers when she goes to kill Edith and Thomas ghost shows up to help her in a sense.



Edith takes Lucille down and her ghost is trapped inside the home forever or until it is torn down I guess. Oh and the creepy ghosts, they were just trying to help Edith figure things out. She finally figured that out but damn, it's hard to think something looking like those ghosts are trying to help you. I would have died on the spot. There is a lot more things to the story but read it and watch it for yourself. Oh and they called the place Crimson Peak because the clay would come up through the ground in the snow and make it blood red.

I do believe that Alan lived and they all lived happily ever after, but they just show them getting help from the town, I just added the happy ever after :-)



And the ghost of Lucille Sharpe, alone, all alone forever, seated at the piano in the unforgiving cold. Playing the first note of the lullaby. 

GOODREADS REVIEW:

 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1611676524

AMAZON LINK TO THE BOOK:

http://www.amazon.com/Crimson-Peak-Official-Movie-Novelization/dp/1783296291?ie=UTF8&keywords=crimson%20peak&qid=1460814130&ref_=sr_1_3&sr=8-3