This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

Fantastic book about the power of love and science. This one stayed with me long after turning the last page. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy.

Not a cracking story, but very cleverly written.
This is a hard book to review, and I found it hard to decide between three and four stars. It was very well written - you could see that great care had been taken to craft each sentence and it touched on some very interesting and important subjects, so it got four stars. I feel that it is one of those books that you feel you 'should like' but instead, just leaves you feeling a bit ... meh. If Cora had been made a bit more so that we cared about her, or the ending had been different, I think that I would have liked it more. I was given a review copy and don't regret the time spent reading it, but it feels like one of those very literary books that just make me feel a bit unqualified to judge them. It is, however, probably one of the books I will remember reading - I read a great deal and a lot of books are quite forgettable - this isn't.

This was a beautifully written novel and gives a lot of information about Victorian England. The description of the Essex coast was particularly haunting and the characters were fascinating and charismatic. I would have no hesitation in recommending this book.

I didn't really know what to think about this book. The writing was undeniably good, it won Waterstones Book of the Year, and the story sounded interesting from the blurb on the back. However, it never took off for me. I thought the character descriptions were very good, it was easy to see the main players and to empathise with them, but the descriptive passages, while well written, just didn't make pictures in my mind. I had an overwhelming image of mud, bleakness and fog and that was about it. Also, the events of the novel didn't inspire me, there were a lot of interesting storylines dangled and left hanging. I did like the way the emotional life of the characters was developed though, with nobody being completely black or white, but again I thought more could have been made of this. My very favourite character was Spencer, who was uncomplicatedly nice! The writing had a definite Victorian feel and has been compared to Dickens. Unfortunately for this book, I was also listening to Bleak House on audio during the same period and when held up directly in Dickens' light there really is no comparison! Overall I gave it 3 stars, not because it was an average book all round but because there were some definite good bits and some definite not-so-good bits and it averaged out in the middle.

This book has won a number of awards and on paper it seemed like exactly the sort of book I like - a historical novel with a twist. However much as I wanted to like it I found myself getting frustrated. I love a complex storyline but at times this felt as though it got bogged down. I'm not sure if the author wanted to cram in so many ideas that the editing couldn't cope or just that it is woolly. Sharper editing and control would have made this outstanding, rather than just very good!

A great read about life in rural Essex - at a time steeped in superstition and rumour. This is a book convincingly set in the 19th century about Cora Seaborne, the novel's protagonist, who leaves London to investigate the supposed presence of a mystical beast in the Essex marshes. However, it's about so much more: relationships, trust, power and deceit.

Many people I respect have raved about this book but I just couldn't love it. It started off well and I was swept along but I got bogged down half way through and started to lose interest in Cora and her adventures in widowhood. I did love the evocative setting and the beautiful descriptions of Victorian atmosphere and Cora and Martha were excellent characters but ultimately the narrative did not grip me enough and the ending was unsatisfying for me. I would read this author again, though, as the writing is engaging and stylish.

I was given a free copy of this book by Netgalley in return for an honest review.

What an immensely pleasurable joy it is reading “The Essex Serpent” by Sarah Perry! I’ve been eagerly anticipating this novel since it was first published last year. I heard such high praise from friends and reviewers I trust and it was Waterstone’s book of the year. I’m greatly relieved that it lives up to the hype. This richly detailed Victorian-set novel with gothic inflections and distinctly vibrant characters gives the feeling of a modern-day book by Charlotte Brontë or George Eliot. Set over a year it follows the widow Cora Seaborne’s excursion to the rural Essex village of Aldwinter which buffets the edge of the gloomy Blackwater marshes. Cora has amateur archaeological inclinations and becomes excited by the secrets this location might hold after rumours and paranoia spread among the inhabitants that a prehistoric beast roams the waters. Strange sightings are reported, bodies are found, children turn hysterical and people go missing. It’s full of suspense as the mystery gradually unfolds, but also skilfully presents competing ideologies of science vs religion and reason vs faith through the actions and sensibilities of the characters. More importantly it shows how these perspectives aren’t necessarily dogmatic and that “far from there being one truth alone, there may be several truths, none of which it would be possible to prove or disprove.” This is a novel which delivers highly on adventure and romance to form an intelligent, moving story.

Cora experiences a sense of independence and freedom now that she’s released from her marriage. She no longer makes much effort with her appearance and can pursue what solely interests her. In particular, she feels liberated from gender constrictions stating “The wonderful thing about being a widow is that, really, you’re not obliged to be much of a woman anymore.” This allows her to express her intelligence and also begin to understand what she desires for the first time (rather than always projecting what her late husband desired.) She’s accompanied by her longtime companion Martha, an ardent socialist who harbours a secret attraction to Cora. At Aldwinter Cora is introduced to the local reverend William Ransome and his luminous wife Stella. The burgeoning romantic relationship that develops between Cora and William is especially interesting because it’s based primarily on their different ideas and competing perspectives as well as physical attraction. Perry is especially good at portraying the complexity of relationships where the boundaries of gender and friendship are blurred.

Although the novel is framed around the notorious gigantic serpent which may or may not be terrorizing the villagers, it’s more about what reality people choose to believe. Some ascribe to values based around superstition, others live by principles from religious texts and others aspire to forge a new understanding of the world based upon scientific findings. What Perry does so magnificently is imbue how the characters perceive their environment based on these perspectives of the world. To Martha who is cognizant of social and economic imbalances “It seemed… that the city’s bricks were red with the blood of its citizens, its mortar pale with the dust of their bones; that deep in its foundations women and children lay head-to-toe in buried ranks, bearing up the city on their backs.” But wealthy George Spencer who dabbles in the medical field expresses that “sometimes I think we must be walking on shoals of bodies without realising it and all the earth’s a graveyard.” While Cora, with her faith in archaeological discovery, feels that “all the earth was a graveyard with gods and monsters under their feet, waiting for weather or a hammer and brush to bring them up to a new kind of life.” These views of the world around them overlap and form a complex picture of not only the changing landscape, but the evolution of the people and wildlife that inhabited it.

Alongside the compelling story and complex characters, the novel is especially enjoyable for the deeply emotive language Perry uses in her descriptions. At some times she expresses a Virginia Woolf-like sensibility where a room literally comes alive when the characters enter it: “Light picked out channels cut in crystal glasses and glossed the polished wood of the table, and Stella’s forget-me-nots bloomed on their napkins.” The descriptions show a playful use of language and convey a very definite sense of mood. I don’t think I’ve read about such a powerfully expressive sense of atmosphere since Andrew Michael Hurley’s eerie and suspenseful “The Loney”. It’s also impressive how this keen sense of detail brings to life the natural environment of Essex which is a county that is somewhat forgotten or maligned these days.

It would be easy to write a lot about many of the other fascinating characters that populate this novel. It feels like Cora’s son Francis may have some form of autism as he has a regimentally ordered mind and emotionally detached personality. Cora’s friend Luke Garrett is a surgeon who pioneers controversial new practices. The ginger-haired girl Naomi Banks possesses unruly powers and passions. Stella and William’s precocious daughter Joanna understands how exerting authority with confidence can get people to follow you. Their lives intersect in fascinatingly dramatic ways, but I don’t want to go into too much detail to avoid giving the plot away. Suffice it to say, the fact that they are so memorable is a testament to how distinctly original Perry makes her characters. Many surprises and delights are to be found in this book. “The Essex Serpent” is as intricate and beautiful as its cover.

The perfect blend of myth, mystery, history and romance. I loved every second.

Recently widowed Cora Seaborne wants to be free of London and the conventional life she's forced into living there, so heads off to Colchester where rumours are spreading of the return of the mythical Essex Serpent to the small coastal village of Aldwinter. Cora is convinced this is merely a previously unrecognised species, and hopes to have her moment of fame by being the one to identify it, but the local vicar William Ransome views its appearance as a test of faith. Despite their opposing views, the two strike up a quick friendship, which becomes more intense and passionate as Ransome's wife falls ill.

Despite appearing on longlists and shortlists for all sorts of literary prizes - Dylan Thomas, Wellcome, Costa - and being voted Waterstones Book of the Year, to be honest I didn't warm to the Essex Serpent. A lot of the writing itself, with its echoes of Dickens and Hardy, appealed to me, but I didn't like the story itself, as it seemed amorphous and shifted about too much in focus, darting from serpents in Essex to pioneering surgery and workers' conditions in London. In keeping with the Dickensian style, there's a wide array of characters - and while all were brilliantly brought to life, some of them seemed unnecessary.

Cora herself is a wonderfully eccentric character - the Victorian wife's round of polite social chitchat isn't for her. Instead she's happier dressed in an old coat and heavy boots out hiking round the marches of Essex hoping to find signs of the mythical serpent, and fame for herself as the discoverer of a new species. William Ransome, too, torn between his affection for his wife and the fascination unconsciously exerted on him by Cora with her disregard for society's conventions, is a character you can believe in. But somehow, put together, their actions didn't quite fit - and the story lines concerning their families and friends seemed to detract from the main one rather than add to it.

In some ways, it feels like a book they may improve with a second or subsequent reading BUT I feel I'm not really likely to try it ...

An extraordinarily enjoyable book. Clever and well plotted, with characters you care about. This book deserves all its success.

This is an amazing book. One of the best I have read in years. I loved the strong female characters, the atmospheric Essex setting and the beautiful detailed descriptions of the old fossils and new surgery. I cannot recommend it more highly.

Eden revisited
Sarah Perry’s Victorian novel has already received such a wide and positive press and is such a ubiquitous presence in the bookshops that another review would seem completely unnecessary. Yet I was moved by this novel, by its luxuriant, old-fashioned prose, the lively, intelligent and well-drawn characters, their trials and tribulations, ambitions and temptations, prejudices and passions.
Perry draws together a Gothic legend of a devouring serpent on the Essex coast, freed from bondage by a recent earthquake, local superstition, the scorn of those committed to new science, misunderstandings and misinterpretations; and most of all the conflicted relationship of the widowed Cora, liberated by the death of her abusive husband, and the open-minded local clergyman Luke, as they and others attempt to make sense of the legend, their society and themselves.

The Essex Serpent offers an embarrassment of riches - murder mystery, monsters, medicine, feminism, romance and religion in a seaside gothic landscape setting. My only issue as a reader is that the characters are all so interesting, rounded and worthy of time and affection. The author is generous to a fault.
Recommend for anyone who would enjoy a modern take on the old-fashioned adventure tale and will give their time to enter into Perry's world. Perfect for a grey day in February!

THE ESSEX SERPENT is hard to resist; it has a beautiful cover that, combined with the title, promises high Victorian Gothic wonderfulness. It first winked at me from those tempting airport bookshelves, but it was a large format paperback and I was headed on a cycling holiday, so there it stayed. Then just before Christmas the nice people at NetGalley emailed me and asked if I would like to read it, YES PLEASE!, I replied.

The novel opens just as our heroine, Cora Seaborne is widowed. Don’t fret, her husband was a sadistic bully and now she is free to live life as she wants. Everybody loves Cora; Luke Garrett, the doctor who attended her husband’s death bed is hopelessly in love with her. As is Martha, whose job it is to look after Francis, Cora’s autistic son. Francis is the only one who seems not to love her. Cora is beautiful, as heroines must be, but eschews smart and fashionable society in favour of pursuing her interest in fossils. It is this interest that takes her to Essex, still shaken by a recent earthquake. Aldwinter is village on the coastal marshes of the Blackwater, mistily remote and prone to superstition. William Ransome is its vicar, trying to allay fears that the Essex Serpent, last seen in 1669, has reappeared.

Love, loss, identity, ambition, belief; all these themes thread through the promised gothic wonder. At times the book seems to be set in modern times, newspaper reports make reference to the war in Afghanistan and a side plot takes us on a meander through the London housing crisis. An East Anglian girl at heart I loved the setting on the low-lying Essex coast but most of all I loved tension surrounding all those who love Cora and, of course, the tension of whether or not the serpent will eat them all up.

Upon the death of her abusive husband, Cora Seaborn leaves London for Essex in hopes of enjoying her newfound freedom and of finding a "living fossil". Rumours of a winged serpent inhabiting the Blackwater Estuary abound and, being of a scientific mind, Cora believes the source of these tales to be an animal species yet to be catalogued.

In the Essex village of Aldwinter, Cora befriends William Ransome, the local vicar who - because of his religious beliefs - is perfectly sceptical of the creature.

The Essex Serpent is a novel of contrasts and contradictions which I did not love or hate but could easily admire. It has got a very strong sense of place with evocative descriptions and fully fleshed out characters. This novel has gained a lot of high praise and I do recommend reading it so that you can form your own opinion of it. Worst case scenario is you will end up with a beautiful unread book at home.

(Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy!)