The Weight of Amber

 

 The Weight of Amber (The Thornfield Inheritance #1)  by Eleanor Vane. Cloud City Press LLC, 2026. 339 pages. ***** May 1, 2026 publication date

From Amazon...

"Ailis Thornfield has a gift she cannot afford to name: when she touches an object, she feels its history. A wedding ring grows heavy with decades of love. A knife burns with the memory of blood. She has survived as an herbalist in the Scottish borderlands by hiding what she can do behind knowledge that looks like intuition and cures that look like luck. Her mother was not so careful." Her mother burned as a witch.  The English Crown sends a magistrate to investigate. James Blackwood is young, educated, and inconveniently principled. He has been sent to find evidence of ungodly practices."

I received an ARC to review and I am so glad that I accepted. Part historical fiction and part romance, it has all of the elements to keep you spellbound. Ailis' gift is a blessing and a curse. She's learned to keep quiet about her ability and to ascribe a "normal" reason for her knowledge. I felt her fear and sadness after her mother's death. Descriptions of the living conditions of the prisoners and the way in which the women were dragged out of their homes reinforced the horror. "To protest was to be named. To be named was to be next." Vane has transported us to Scotland in 1593 and begged the question, what would you do? I recommend this novel and look forward to the second one in the series. 

Eleanor Vane holds an MA in Early Modern European History and spent years working in museum archives before turning to fiction. Her debut series, The Thornfield Inheritance, spans five centuries and three continents. For more information, click here. 

Don't wait, preorder now (publication date May 1) from Amazon. 

Follow me on IG at flaming_books.

#bookstagram #historicalfiction #Scotlandhistoricalfiction #historicalscottishfiction #medievalhistoricalromance #historicalromance #witchtrialsfiction