Book Review: The Fire Child

I was sent a copy of The Fire Child by SK Tremayne to review as part of Mumsnet Book Club. I was excited to get my hands on it, because I reviewed SK Tremayne’s The Ice Twins last year and loved it…
 

This is the story of Rachel, who has grown up poor in south London. Aged 30, she marries David, a wealthy lawyer, and moves to his family home in Cornwall. The family home is actually a huge multi-bedroomed mansion which has been in David’s family for generations; they were wealthy mine owners in previous centuries. David also has an 8 year old son, who begins to act more and more strangely as time goes on. His mother died in an accident in one of the old mines, but there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Rachel begins to dig into the past: of the house; of the mines; of the family. In doing so she begins to uncover terrible truths about the mining industry, about her husband’s family… and about David’s dead wife. Later on in the book, we also learn about Rachel’s past.

I enjoyed this book; it was definitely an easy read and I actually read more than half the book in an afternoon – unheard of for me! I love the way that with Tremayne’s books, it seems like every tiny detail actually turns out to be part of the story a few pages or chapters later. 

The idea of being all but alone in a massive old house, with winding corridors of basement rooms that were previously used for servants is creepy enough, but add to that the fact the tin mines – where men regularly died in accidents – go underneath the house – and you have a whole new level of creepy! Tremayne uses this to his advantage, and there were several points during the book where I was on the edge of my seat, biting my nails and almost shouting, no, don’t go in there!

I loved the book and thought the story was brilliantly put together. The characters were well developed and interesting. The one thing I didn’t like was the black and white photos dotted through the book. They were photos of miners in mines, so clearly the originals were black and white; but printing them on a normal page in a book made them really hard to make out. I often found myself stuck peering at photos rather than getting on and reading the book!

The book really made me think; although it’s a work of fiction and the house it centres on is made up, the tin mines that are all over Cornwall are real, and so are a lot of the other things mentioned. I found myself Googling a lot, wanting to find out more about the mines and what went on in them. It was fascinating but also horrifying to find that a lot of what I read in the book was true.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes a great read. It had me gripped from start to finish and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

 

 Thanks for reading.

You can read my other book reviews here.