Published by Black & White Publishing
Age Group: Adult
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Mental Health Representation, Queer Characters, Sapphic Characters, Magic Users, Mental Health, Trauma, Dark Fantasy, Dystopian Fantasy, Gothic Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Emotion Magic, Alternative Universe, Scotland, Family Drama
My Rating:
Published on: 6th June 2024
Pages: 272
Disability Representation: Mental Health, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide, Trauma.
Buy this Book! Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Blackwells / Bookshop.org US / Bookshop.org UK / Waterstones
Add to Goodreads
Imagine you could be rid of your sadness, your anxiety, your heartache, your fear. Imagine you could take those feelings from others and turn them into something beautiful. Imagine the power that would give you, how valuable you would be to others...
Lynx is a Grief Nurse. Kept by the Asters, a wealthy, influential family, to ensure they're never troubled by negative emotions. Kept at their manor house, limited to its walls, plush rooms and the elegant grounds on the family's Scottish island, she knows no other life.
When news arrives that the Asters' eldest son is dead, Lynx does what she can to alleviate their sorrow. But as guests flock to the island for the wake, bringing their own secrets, lies and grief, tensions rise and Lynx finds herself trapped at the centre of a family tearing itself apart.
But the son's death is not the last and the island soon becomes a vortex of jealousy, suspicion, hatred and tragedy - with Lynx caught in the middle. With romance, intrigue and spectacular gothic world-building, this spellbinding novel, set in a subtly reimagined 1920s Scotland, marks the debut of an extraordinary new voice in fiction.
This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!
Content Warnings:
Please note
As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programmes I earn a small commission from items purchased using links featured in this post at no extra cost to you. Click here to learn more.
Every purchase you make through Just Geeking By helps keep this blog running.
The Grief Nurse Book Review
I was immediately intrigued by the plot of The Grief Nurse by Angie Spoto and the concepts suggested by it. Find out what I thought about this dystopian novel in my review below!
Lynx is a grief nurse, an indentured servant who has the ability to remove grief. Only the affluent are awarded grief nurses, and Lynx lives with the Asters on the island of Mount Sorcha. Although she grew up alongside their youngest child Andromeda, she is not part of the family, looked upon with fear and distaste as well as necessity. Or jealousy by those who don’t have access to her gifts.
It is a life that Lynx longs to be free from. Following the death of one of their sons, Sculptor, the Asters hold a party to celebrate his life with Lynx, their grief nurse, on full display. Everything is going according to plan until Sculptor’s betrothed shows up with his will, which includes the inheritance of a grief nurse.
When more deaths occur and all the guests are trapped on the island by a heavy storm, Lynx finds herself in a world of secrets, drama and uncertainty as she deals with her own feelings and memories as well as those of the Asters.
Initially, I gave The Grief Nurse by Angie Spoto a four-star rating, as this haunting gothic novel seemed like a wonderful read at first. After reconsidering certain elements of the book, specifically the world-building, I decided to change it to a three-star rating. Spoto has created an intriguing world that interrogates the idea of grief and the role that negative emotions play in our lives. I enjoyed the overall story, and the mystery was satisfying, however, the gaps in the world-building kept niggling at me.
In the dystopian world of The Grief Nurse, being ‘Bright’ is the optimal state that affluent people seek, and they talk about losing that Brightness or becoming ‘Bright’ again when they feel grief. Grief is split into three emotions: Heartache, Dread and Sorrow. To take grief from a person, a grief nurse needs to hold their token, an object that they always have with them. This is the first point where there is a hole in Spoto’s world-building, as she never explains how a token is created. The use of Tokens prevents people from having to touch a grief nurse’s skin, something that is considered repugnant, as it’s believed that touching a grief nurse will lead to a contamination of grief.
Only the rich are allowed a grief nurse, and there is a waiting list for them. The social and political dynamics around grief nurses were well-developed and enriched the story. Likewise, the insight we are given into the grief nurse’s early life and training is well written. Again, some details are lacking, and in this case, as a disabled reader, I find them quite problematic.
The physical appearance of grief nurses is very distinctive: white hair and pale eyes. At the start of the book, there is a scene with Andromeda reading divinatory cards for Lynx, and one of the cards is called ‘The Grief Nurse’. It is of a woman with white hair and white eyes holding a moon, and surrounded by other moons. This is the only suggestion in the book (some relation to the moon) as to why grief nurses have such a pale appearance, and it is very weak at best.
Considering how the novel ends, and the themes of exoticism and discrimination in The Grief Nurse, it concerns me that grief nurses have the same appearance as people with albinism and that no explanation is offered as to why this is so.
The biggest hole in the world building for me was the ‘Faders’. I was so confused by what they were that I took a break while reading to look for answers online, hoping to find an interview with Spoto with an explanation. Instead, I found other reviews mentioning the same thing. Described as having grief that tasted different to grief nurses, and a mutual hunger, that often became sexual, between a grief nurse and a Fader, they are considered perverts by society. Faders also have a chance to give birth to a grief nurse child, something that is seen as prosperous for poor families and a scandal for rich families.
But what is the difference between a normal person and a Fader? Alongside Faders, some people seem to replenish grief more quickly. At first, I thought that these people may represent people with mental health conditions, however, I think that those who replenish grief too quickly may have anxiety. While Faders have mental health conditions. This is complete guesswork because Spoto seems to have created Faders as a means to create grief nurses and cause drama and distress, but has not anchored them in her world-building.
Visually, The Grief Nurse is stunning. Spoto names Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington as an influence, and I can see that influence in the way she describes the powers of grief nurses and how they view the world. I particularly liked the way she developed the concept of grief and how it appears and tastes differently depending on the person, shaped by their experiences.
I think that part of the problem with this book is that Spoto was a little too visual, and while she was busy painting gorgeous visuals with her words, she wasn’t connecting the dots behind the scenes. For example, the grief witches have a tree inside them, and everything that happens with Lynx makes perfect sense… apart from, why is there a tree inside her? Why do grief witches have trees? And yes, the author does just get to say ‘I made this, it’s there because I said so!’ to a certain degree, but when there are just so many holes, it just feels unfinished.
This all being said, I still kept coming back to a three-star rather than a lower rating. This is Spoto’s debut novel, and I’ve added her next book to my TBR because her writing style is beautiful and unique.
About Angie Spoto
Angie Spoto is an American writer living in Scotland. She grew up near Chicago, lived in the Netherlands, and eventually moved to Scotland to get her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. She loves stories that are dark and surreal, strange and magical, and is inspired by writers like Ursula Le Guinn, Octavia Butler, Leonora Carrington, and Naomi Novik. She loves fairy tales, especially Scottish ones. She lives beside the shore with her husband and son.
Over to you
Thanks for reading my book review for The Grief Nurse by Angie Spoto!
Don’t forget to check out the rest of my reviews if you’re looking for some more book recommendations 🙂 You can also now sign up for my newsletter to get an email each month with a list of my new reviews!
Support Just Geeking By
I hope you enjoyed this post! If you did please consider sharing it on social media using the nifty buttons at the end of this post <3
If you enjoyed this content please consider helping to support my blog. You can do this in multiple ways (click here to find out how!) or by donating via Ko-Fi to help me reach my current goal.
Discover more from Just Geeking By
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.