Book Review: "Lie Quietly" by Alice Wright

“This broken, unwelcoming building was far from the warm and happy viewings she and Luke had taken late in the summer when they had fallen in love with the ramshackle old Lodge, with its original flint and curling vines, and had decided it was to hold their dreams. Now it felt almost hostile.” ~ Alice Wright

Alice Wright’s debut novel Lie Quietly reverberates with passages such as the one above: gothic, psychological, almost primeval. The novel takes readers through a dual-timeline narrative, plunging into the troubled past and present through the eyes of two women - one, a lovestruck young girl with her whole life ahead of her, and the other, a mother-to-be eagerly anticipating a new start. Although fifty years separates them, a singular dwelling connects them in a tale of love, loss, and unspeakable horror.

• Synopsis & Review

• Book Summary

In 2009, Hannah Webb and her husband arrive in Robbers Bridge to take up residence in Robery Lodge, a forlorn and dilapidated home with a dark and lurid history. The villagers, however, meet these new arrivals with fear, hostility, and disapproval. Malice and grief swirl within the Lodge’s halls, and as Hannah unravels its past, she learns that sometimes the past refuses to, well, lie quietly.

In 1959, young Annie Mills and Jack Allen find in each other a wild, untethered love. Their fellow villagers share nothing but antipathy, even jealousy. Superstition and malice beget tragedy, shattering Robbers Bridge forever and leaving behind a persistent, deadly legacy.

At heart, Lie Quietly reminds me of Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, another Gothic novel with its share of grey-shaded characters, illicit love set against traditional societal constrictions, tragedy, timelessness of the environment, and the slight anthropomorphizing of the central location as both a silent observer of the plot as well as a contributing barrier to happiness.

Robbers Bridge feels suspended in time - in both the past and present. Through the clever manipulation of atmosphere and description, Wright provokes readers to engage in a suspension of disbelief, that the stories occurring therein could exist in Victorian England as easily as the present. Hardy also employed such a tactic in narrating the story of Egdon Heath, the location in which the events of The Return of the Native take place.

In 2003, Mark Asquith wrote in The English Review that Native’s central message was “life is harsh, the best we can do is endure and use our limited free will to make the best of limited opportunities for happiness…Hardy’s tale is primarily concerned with those who fail to learn its message and continually attempt to use their free will to impose themselves on the universe and determine their own destiny.”

The same message applies to the love triangle of Jack, Annie, and Annie’s rival Lillian in Lie Quietly. Jack and Annie plan to start a new life and abscond from Robbers Bridge in the future, and Lillian plots to usurp Annie’s role in Jack’s life. Robbers Bridge, however, conspires to prevent any true happiness. Depressing, perhaps, but then again Gothic literature rarely leaves readers with warm feelings.

The novel’s plot moves as slowly as mist creeping across the tangled brush on an English moor at dawnbreak. This is intentional. Each chapter unravels increasingly more of the plot until the shattering climax and resolution. Some readers may find the slow progress frustrating, but Wright excellently balances plot progression in each chapter with hooks and information reveals.

Lie Quietly is an ode to the classical Gothic novel, one will resonate with readers long after its conclusion.

Thank you to Alice for a copy of her novel for review consideration!

Title: Lie Quietly
Author: Alice Wright
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Publication Date: January 2026
Page Count: 338pp

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Featured image: A couple of crosses in the middle of a forest (Unsplash/Denny Müller)