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Luckenbooth

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Luckenbooth

By: Jenni Fagan
Narrated by: Cathleen McCarron, David McCallion, Fiona McNeill, Jeff Harding
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Stories tucked away on every floor. No. 10 Luckenbooth Close is an archetypal Edinburgh tenement.

The devil’s daughter rows to the shores of Leith in a coffin. The year is 1910, and she has been sent to a tenement building in Edinburgh by her recently deceased father to bear a child for a wealthy man and his fiancée. The harrowing events that follow lead to a curse on the building and its residents - a curse that will last for the rest of the century.

Over nine decades, No. 10 Luckenbooth Close bears witness to emblems of a changing world outside its walls. An infamous madam, a spy, a famous Beat poet, a coal miner who fears daylight, a psychic: these are some of the residents whose lives are plagued by the building’s troubled history in disparate, sometimes chilling ways. The curse creeps up the nine floors, and an enraged spirit world swells to the surface, desperate for the true horror of the building’s longest kept secret to be heard.

Luckenbooth is a bold, haunting and dazzlingly unique novel about the stories and secrets we leave behind and the places that hold them long after we are gone.

©2021 Jenni Fagan (P)2020 W F Howes Contemporary Contemporary Romance Fiction Genre Fiction Horror Literary Fiction Romance Scary
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A tale through Edinburgh time. Twisty, turny and weird as f. Really enjoyed this work. Would recommend to those looking for a journey into the strange.

Another great story by Jenni.

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I’ve listened an hour or two writing this, and write with a heavy heart. The language is polished as you would expect. I’m sure the story and telling made sense to Jenni but it makes no sense to me, I fear. My fault more than the author, perhaps.... I think I might read for myself.

Disappointing I think and regret

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I loved the atmosphere of this book. Woman after woman deliciously and dangerously inhabiting Luckenbooth.

Yum, The Terrible House

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While the narration and quality of writing was wonderful (and at times even poetic), there was a tendency to go off into tangents with each character’s thoughts. This was an interesting way of story telling as it follows several characters and time lines surrounding this one area but some of these drag on a bit or don’t really go anywhere. With that said I’m satisfied with the main plot and how it all ends. If you’re looking for something a little outside the box then I’d recommend this, just be warned that while this is an average length for an audiobook, it can feel a lot longer with the pacing.

Beautifully written but a but a bit long winded

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This book is a lovesong to Edinburgh, one of the world's great cities, and Fagan captures its dark beauty masterfully. She sets a series of narratives inside - or just outside - the walls of a tenement building in the old town, which presides over a long history and is the one constant character. Fagan is a skilled writer and many of the characters fascinating, but this is a book in need of a good editor. The stronger narratives are curtailed to leave space for the less interesting, there is a recurring tendency to list details unnecessarily and it sometimes feels more like manifesto than novel. This was not helped by the delivery of two of the narrators, who read in a repetitive cadence that became increasingly irritating. However, there are enjoyable and striking moments, including the ending, and it is a book that will stay with me, much like the city.

Intriguing, But Doesn't Quite Live Up to Promise

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