#BookReview ‘Hold My Place’ by Cassondra Windwalker

About the book…

When librarian Sigrun falls head-over-heels for the sophisticated and very married Edgar Leyward, she never expects to find herself in his bed—or his heart.

Nevertheless, when his enigmatic wife Octavia dies from a sudden illness, Sigrun finds herself caught up in a whirlwind romance worthy of the most lurid novels on her bookshelves. Sigrun soon discovers Octavia wasn’t Edgar’s first lost love, or even his second.

Three women Edgar has loved met early deaths. As she delves into her beloved’s past through a trove of discovered letters, the edges of Sigrun identity begin to disappear, fading into the women of the past.

Sigrun tells herself it’s impossible for any dark magic to be at play—that the dead can’t possibly inhabit the bodies of the living—but something shadowy stalks the halls of the Leyward house and the lines between the love of the present and the obsessions of the past become increasingly blurred—and bloody.

Hugest of thanks to the wonderful Jamie-Lee and Stephen of Blaxck Crow PR for giving me the opportunity to read the brilliant followup to ‘Idle Hands’, Cassondra Windwalker’s ‘Hold My Place’ which is out now from Black Spot Books.

Cassondra again creates a wonderfully engaging and three dimensional heroine/narrator in librarian Sigrun. She is entirely aware of who she is, and who she is not ; an unashamedly gothic lover of paranormal fiction who holds her place in the library as a place of safety and security.

Taking up a evening course in cookery, she meets the enigmatic girl-crush Edgar, and finds herself swooning over him as much as the other women in the class , all of whom find him the most delicious dish on the table , the ingredient they all want to cook with, and have done for several years standing.

Sigrun’s cooking skills do not exactly improve, however, she gets to observe the beautiful relationship between his ephemeral wife, Octavia, and Edgar whenever she drops casually into the classroom, It is a masterclass of passive/aggressive power play as she firmly stamps her claim on him, whilst illustrating to all the other women that she has no concerns about him at all. After all, look at what he has to come home to…

This overload of sensory descriptions, of smells, tastes and skin feeling creates a smorgasbord of delights so that when the pandemic inserts itself into the story, you keenly feel the absence, just as Sigrun does without her library, without her classes, and, at the start of it all, without hope.

She has chosen a life where she maintains who enters and leaves it-her solitary choices belong to her but when isolation creates that sense of loneliness, it completely makes sense that when Edgar calls, she comes. Quite literally.

Before you know it, and without concessions to feminine swooning or desperation, or any of the other tropes which writers resort to to undermine a strong feminine lead, Cassondra Windwalker has Sigrun and Edgar married. And in a Bluebeard-esque reversal of hiding his past, as a wedding gift, he gives to her his honesty in the form of a box containing letters, pictures and mementoes of Octavia. And his other wives and partners who have died tragically young, in totally believable ways.

As a reader you have this ‘Hurray she got her man!’ reaction tempered with a ‘WHAT did he just do?!’ that leaves you on the ropes, this is not what normally happens.

The box becomes a loaded weapon-to read or not to read, is it a test?

Wouldn’t your natural curiousity get the better of you as to why all these women, why all this love bound up in ribbons and bows, what does it all mean?

Reading being second nature to Sigrun and diving straight in, the unexpected happens as their lives with Edgar unfold. Are they warnings, portents or something much darker? Will Sigrun herself end up in the box? And once it is opened, can that act ever be undone?

Deeply creepy with resonant descriptions which luxuriate and roll around your mind, I took to Sigrun immediately and felt her authentic , middle aged voice was a revelation.

The underlying menace cuts through the extravagant prose to lightly mark you as you read, but never takes over the story completely, it reminds you of its haunting presence throughout.

I completely devoured it and found it both deliciously dark, and hugely entertaining.

*Also the name Sigrun rings a bell and a quick bit of research shows she was a Valkyrie in Norse mythology*

About the author…

Cassondra Windwalker earned a BA of Letters at the University of Oklahoma. She parlayed that highly marketable degree into degrees in bookselling and law enforcement before pursuing her writing career full time.