LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Bridget Collins has been a must-read author for me ever since I fell in love with The Binding. I love the way her narratives gradually unfurl leading you into compelling and immersive worlds. Stepping into Haltington, you can feel the insular atmosphere, the wariness of outsiders in a village that’s made smaller by the losses of the Great War. A place where superstition equals religion in importance, the supernatural features as a steady and persistent undercurrent, looming over everything through the Face, a chalk carving upon the down, steadily sliding into disrepair now its caretakers are gone.
Just as the setting lures you in, with the tension and foreboding encroaching from the edges of your vision like a fog, the relationship between the characters unfurls. There’s Kit running from her wartime work in Paris, Florence yearning for connection, their relationship is like a rock rolling over the downs, uncertain at first but gaining momentum with seeming inevitability. Then there’s Phoebe, moving through the story like a wandering spectre and the most attuned to the haunting darkness approaching.
Perfect for readers who love the subtle creeping of gothic tales, The Naked Light is a compulsive and uncanny read about human connection.
Charlotte Walker
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About
The Naked Light Synopsis
Above the village of Haltington, a chalk face carved into the hillside is rumoured to protect the locals from malevolent spirits. So long as it is maintained by a local family, all will be well. But the First World War has decimated the men of the village, and when Aggie Bone dies not long after her sons are killed in battle, her cottage is left empty. There is nobody to tend to the upkeep of the Face. Still, it's only an old wives' tale. Isn't it?
Florence has come to live with her widowed brother-in-law and her rebellious teenaged niece. In the wake of the war it seems unlikely she will marry, and she has resigned herself to spinsterhood - until she sees a man's shirts flapping on the line outside the newly-leased Bone cottage. Could a husband have landed on her doorstep, and is that what she really wants?
Kit is an artist - unconventional, androgynous and traumatised by the events of the war. She seeks peace, and a muse, in Haltington; but under the chalk, something is stirring…
From the #1 bestselling author of THE BINDING, this is a dark, compelling and deeply moving novel about grief, identity and forbidden desires.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780008424091 |
| Publication date: |
25th September 2025 |
| Author: |
Bridget Collins |
| Publisher: |
The Borough Press an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
400 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Historical Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Press Reviews
Bridget Collins Press Reviews
'At once a moving study of women's lives after the First World War, an exquisite love story and a terrifying folk horror. So beautifully written that I could hardly bear to stop reading, this is Bridget Collins at her beguiling best' EMILIA HART
'Bridget Collins' writing haunts my dreams' ERIN KELLY
'A spine-chillingly scary romance and a heartwarmingly romantic horror novel… I raced through it at breakneck speed even as I wished it would go on forever. Beautifully written, thrillingly imagined, and a joy on every page' SANDRA NEWMAN
'I honestly never thought another author could rival Sarah Waters… but I was wrong. I haven't read a historical novel quite as good as this in years!' LOUISE MORRISH
READERS ARE LOVING
'Oh my, this is just lovely reading… atmospheric and beautifully composed'
'I love books by this author and think this could be her best thus far. Wow, what a read. It truly has a gothic horror feel about it, a slow creeping dread fills the book, and I loved it!'
Author
About Bridget Collins
Bridget Collins was born in 1981 in Kent, England. She always wanted to be an actor, and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art after studying English at King's College, Cambridge, but after she graduated from drama school she found herself starting to write a novel as a way to distract herself when she wasn't working - and discovered that she loved it... Her first published novel, The Traitor Game, won the Branford Boase Award and was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Since then she has published six more novels for teenagers. The Binding, her first adult novel, was published in January 2019 and went straight to no. 2 in the Sunday Times bestseller list. The Betrayals is her second adult novel.
Although she doesn't act professionally any more - writing having taken centre stage - she is a keen amateur actor. She also loves bookbinding, running, arguing, napping and eating good food (not in that order), almost as much as she loves reading.
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