Tiffany Reisz
The Headmaster
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Having just finished Ann Radcliffe’s ‘The Italian’, I spotted a modern Gothic/horror book available to review. The book is ‘The Headmaster’ by Tiffany Reisz. What I didn’t fully appreciate at the time was that there would be some very descriptive spicy chapters, but I blushed my way through and think the book stands up in its own right.
The idea for the book is sound. Gwen Ashby’s life has fallen apart and she’s off to couch-surf and hopefully find work. However, at a rest stop, she hears that a nearby school might be hiring and decides to check it out. Despite crashing her car to avoid hitting a deer, she ends up on a one week trial at a suitably atmospheric boarding school.
The students are unusually attentive, the school buildings have an ominous flavour, and there’s a woman in white who haunts the walls. It’s like Shirley Jackson, but with some rather fun dialogue between a flirtatious Gwen and the school’s headmaster.
Just over the halfway point, things get quite erotic. Things are getting buried with quite stunning frequency, and we’re not talking about being thrown alive into a coffin. Stylistically, things are raunchy and very detailed. Certainly enough to bring some colour to your cheeks.
These pages don’t prevent progress towards a growing feeling that something at the school isn’t right and the ending provides a satisfying conclusion (narrative, rather than the multiple satisfying conclusions scattered throughout the story).
This is a winner in terms of the eerie atmosphere and it certainly ticks off many of the elements you’d expect from a Gothic novel, it just dials up from the classic heaving bosom and constantly fainting protagonists with a heroine who isn’t particularly shy.
This edition of the book will be available on 3rd September 2024, with illustrations by Andrew Shaffer.
Publisher’s Synopsis
A Romance Writers of America RITA Award Finalist!
Nestled in the shadow of the Appalachians is where Gwen Ashby stumbles upon the William Marshal Academy, and she’s given a trial position as a literature teacher. The gothic boarding school seems trapped in time yet it feels like home the moment Gwen arrives.
She’s charmed by the lovely buildings, bewitched by the eager students…and utterly seduced by the headmaster. Edwin Yorke is noble, handsome and infuriatingly proper. But his tweedy exterior and courtly manners conceal a raw sensual power that Gwen longs to unleash.
It’s strangely thrilling to be the only woman on campus—save one other. An eerie white-clad figure roams the grounds by night. She never speaks. She leaves no trace. But this ghostly blight on Gwen’s new dream life is the key to the Marshal Academy’s mysterious allure.
This 10th-anniversary expanded print edition of Tiffany Reisz’s gothic romance “The Headmaster” is newly updated and expanded, with revised text and black-and-white illustrations throughout.
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