In the present day, Lila, grieving the death of her prematurely born daughter, is anonymously given a remote cottage in England's Peak District. Bewildered at the windfall but desperate for something to distract her from her loss and the rocky condition of her marriage, Lila leaves her London home to tackle the refurbishment of the decrepit structure.
In 1980, five new college graduates, all gloomy about the dearth of jobs in the depressed economy, decide to try a Utopian subsistence-living experiment at the cottage. They take up illegal residence and pool their scant resources, determined to live off the land for a full year. But isolation and fear of discovery create tensions they can't avoid, and sinister undertones in the group dynamics soon lead to dark turns.
Initially unaware of the previous residents' history, Lila still senses something odd about the house. As she digs deeper, she discovers surprising things about the cottage's past and her own future.
Hannah Richell (The House of Tides) aptly captures the mounting tension that isolation in a small group can create, and cleverly twists the tale in an unexpected direction. Lila's struggle to reconnect with her husband in the wake of their family tragedy is no less gripping. Richell combines many small, apparently innocuous moments with the slow pace of country life and manages to create an enthralling whole. The Shadow Year has cross-genre appeal and its gothic overtones will captivate readers of literary fiction, mystery and romance alike. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm