The Curse of the Saltmarsh Girl

 The Curse of the Saltmarsh Girl

Reviewed By  Janet Mawdesley       August 7, 2026

 

Author  Clare Marchant

Distributor:      Amazon
ISBN:                 978-1807038410
Publisher:         Boldwood Books
Release Date:   7 August 2026  

   Website:   https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Saltmarsh-Girl-Clare-Marchant/dp/1807038416

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Clare Marchant has woven enchantment into her latest captivating return to a time long ago, in The Curse of the Saltmarsh Girl, in which a time slip or parallel timeline between 2026 and 1665, becomes woven into a link that demands a wrong is once and for all made right.

Angel Bailey, very much a modern young woman and noted singer is struggling with her life. She has fled to the safety of her brother Dan’s home, a remote barn conversion on the Norfolk Coast only to discover that he has been called away on an assignment. Her journey up has been eventful, frightening and incredibly stressful.

Margery is seeking her mother who left their home in the town of Kelveton several weeks prior, to visit her married daughter in Saltmarsh village and has not yet returned home. Margery is tired, well aware of the treacherous marsh she must cross to get to Saltmarsh, the night is falling and something very strange is going on. She can hear voices, sees fires on the beach and seeks to find help at the cottage of Bridget, a local healer. She is told to come inside and forget what she has just seen and heard.

Clare Marchant has deftly woven the lives of these two young women seamlessly together as they seek their mother; one who feels sure her mother has been murdered by her brutish son in law, the other adopted at three months old, has been contacted by a woman claiming to be her natural sister; their birth mother now in a Hospice with a deep need to connect to her second daughter before she passes away.

Both face deeply personal challenges which must be resolved  before they can find peace and acceptance in their lives. As Margery persists in demanding answers about the disappearance of her mother, she realises that she needs to leave a record of what has been occurring in Saltmarsh village for someone in the future to discover.

Angel appears to be the person chosen to discover the flint markings at the bottom of the old church ruins, which lead her into a world of spectres, otherworldly creatures and superstition attached to what was once the village of Saltmarsh, eventually abandoned as a plague village, sealed off in 1665, its secrets hidden until 2026.

Captivating, gripping and haunting, The Curse of the Saltmarsh Girl is utterly absorbing until the last page which leaves you slightly bereft to have left such a fascinating story.

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Fiction, General, Historical