Grace

Shine (The Watchers) spins a timeless tale of memory and hauntings in this evocative contemporary Irish gothic. Bookshop proprietor Grace, an adoptee, gets a call one evening from a priest on Croaghnakeela, a small island off the coast of Ireland, who informs her that the birth mother she never knew has died and left Grace her house and everything else she owned. Grace arranges a solo journey to Croaghnakeela to see her birthplace and, she hopes, to discover some point of connection with her birth mother. Upon arrival, however, she finds the island to be dark, dilapidated, and close to deserted: there are no children, and the aging population has thinned. It’s a somewhat slow start and readers may have trouble getting hooked, but the eerie atmosphere is well drawn, and once the hints of something malignant lurking beneath Croaghnakeela’s surface coalesce into more concrete horrors, the pace picks up and the plot comes together. Patient readers will be rewarded. (Feb.)