Erin Kelly’s Stone Mothers bring a suspense thriller standalone to readers when the protagonist, Marianne Thackeray, must spent time in a flat in the renovated mental hospital near where she grew up.

With her mother in the throes of dementia and Marianne’s sister bearing the brunt of her care, Marianne has returned to the area on leave to help out. Her helpful husband doesn’t understand the history this place holds for her, when she and her boyfriend at the time were joined irrevocably by events that tie them together in an enormous secret that has affected her life ever since.

That secret revolves around a current member of the House of Lords member Helen Greenlaw. When Marianne’s history with Jesse and the secrets they hold threaten to rise to the surface, everything Marianne has built, from her life with her husband and her career, to her daughter, Honor, will be sacrificed. She can’t let that happen.

Working backwards in time to tell the story, Kelly hikes up the tension in a psychological thriller that becomes terrifying.

This is a multi-layered story, about darkness and how secrets can grip you in their thrall to allow the past to overshadow the present. The setting adds a gothic element that adds to this haunting novel that will have horrific consequences for more than one character. The themes of motherhood and what that means to different people, coupled with mental health issues revolved in different factions in the story.