“Silence fell again, thick and unnatural.
And somewhere in the dark, the last vestige of the family I thought I had cracked and fell away, taking my childhood with it.”
All The Signs by Lilia Hughes was a fantastic read. It’s got the interiority of a psychological thriller with lush prose that’s downright gothic, and it read as SUCH an intimate look into Darcy’s twisted world… At least the part of it that’s been shaped by proximity to her mother, Cordelia. The story has all the fixins you’d look for in a good gothic book — a gorgeous and creepy Scottish manor, a hedge maze, a locked basement, a compounding series of secrets — plus a modern edge that makes it sharp and bingeable.
Hughes leans into atmosphere with a deft hand. I loved the descriptions of the manor, and the prose was downright beautiful. Truly, I don’t think I’ve highlighted anything in my Kindle this heavily in months. The sentences were just so pretty, I couldn’t help but applaud how beautiful it was. And Darcy’s dissociation was handled so thoughtfully. The ambiguity it brought fueled the tension more than any overt action, which felt SO deliciously gothic and scratched an itch I didn’t know I was feeling. I thought the pacing very much reflected that same design: deliberate, dense, and emotionally heavy in a way that asks you to sit with it rather than race through the story.
What ultimately made this book resonate for me was its emotional intelligence. Disentangling oneself from the cost of loving a parent who’s hard to love is a heavy topic, but I found that Hughes explored it beautifully, and the constant psychological tension kept me hooked. In a way, it read like a character study; atmospheric, lush, and lingering. Wholeheartedly recommend for fans of modern gothic fiction and psychological thrillers.