The Wayland Babes
By Judi Daykin
Get ready for Halloween with these 5 spooky tales that will have your eyes open as wide as wide can be! Thanks to Hobeck Books for inviting me to review on the blog tour. Find out more in the blurb and my then my review below…
Blurb
Thass bad. Somethin’ dreadful always happens when the chil’un be abroad.
The Wayland Woods in Norfolk – an ancient place where sound and silence, truth and myth, and life and death intertwine.
Some say that the babes of the woods still walk the Earth – wandering through the trees, forever lost, holding hands and searching for help. To see them is a terrible omen. As daylight falls, you may hear the wailing – is it the babes, or just the wind in the trees? What could it mean to see the babes, feel their presence, and be lured deeper into the woods? They look so real. They seem so helpless and desperate.
Five tales tell of five lives touched over five centuries by the so-called babes in the wood. If they beckon, will you follow?
Review
5 tales in time for a spooky Halloween. 5 spine-tingling tales to creep you out. The atmosphere curls around you when reading the stories that take readers back in time. Time mysteriously disappears as though under a spell from when the first page is turned!
There’s a war horse, kings, churches and then there is the mysterious Mary to discover in the 1600’s. Fast forward and travel to the 1800’s for the next story, where the landscape is beautiful along the coastline and the Thames is also busy with barges. There’s and artist, but all is not what it seems. Still in the 1800’s there’s a Vicar and his wife and all seems very grand with a lord and lady, a great big house and a churchyard with a graveyard, with something mysterious.
Fast forward to the next tale set in the 1900’s with a bit of a war time story with an unexpected difference…
Keep moving on to discover Adrian and what he really thinks of Christmas and Pantomimes and what happens next…
There are a lot of mysterious, creepy goings on to see if you dare to follow these Wayland Babes in to their woods through the ages. I dared and was impressed by the sinister, atmospheric nature and calibre of writing to get it just right.
Each story is preceded by a poem that also sets the scene and gets you in the mood for what’s to come. There’s an Afterword about Norfolk Folktales and Pantomimes that makes interesting reading and further puts them into context.