THE HARROW HOME FOR WAYWARD GIRLS

A building that’s seen its share of traumatized inhabitants has secrets waiting to be revealed.

For many years, the Harrow Home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore housed unwed pregnant girls, but now it’s owned by the Thorpes, who are turning it into the White Heron Hotel. Though the building’s purpose is changing, the girls’ emotional pain continues to haunt the halls. It’s June 1947, and twins Grace and Cooper Harrow have moved from the main house to the caretaker’s cottage, where they live and work beside their parents and the last wayward girl, Magnolia Sutton. While her family members have adjusted to the change, something stalks Grace at every turn. When she looks in mirrors, blond Grace sees a strange woman with “bobbed black hair, her lipsticked mouth stretched wide.” Then the Thorpe girls arrive—Rose, Ella, and Lou—and Rose is soon haunted by the same vision. Together, Grace and Rose try to uncover who this woman was and how to free her from her past. The story gets off to a leisurely start, taking the time to carefully set up the characters. There’s an ominous, suffocating atmosphere surrounding the central mystery and a sense of dread that comes from the constraints placed on each of the characters—the rigid expectations, lack of autonomy, and quiet ways they’re forced into roles they didn’t choose. Main characters are cued white.

A haunting, slowly building mystery that finds horror not in what is seen but in what cannot be escaped.