In a way, S. J. Bolton's second published novel AWAKENING is a coming-of-age story. The protag and narrator of the tale is a reclusive wildlife veterinarian, Clara Benning, unmarried daughter of an archdeacon. She practices in a remote British village and prefers her mute swans and baby owl chicks to people. But several invasions of snakes into the village and the death of three old people, once parishioners of a church burned to the ground fifty years prior, change her life.

Additionally, the novel is a quintessential gothic crime thriller. It is no coincidence that Bolton was dubbed the "high priestess of rural gothic crime" in Harrogate the summer of 2011. Her third novel Blood Harvest was shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier mystery of the year, an award given only to British and Irish crime writers. Bolton was the only female writer nominated. All the gothic elements are richly detailed in AWAKENiNG:

An isolated British village "creeping with snakes and mystery." An abandoned and old, rambling residence, Witcher House. A burned skeleton of a church never rebuilt.

A disfigured female. In this novel, the narrator herself with a side of her face scarred by a horrendous childhood accident.

Old family secrets. The four, maybe five Witcher brothers, once pillars of the community. Strange religious rituals fifty years ago at a church, burned and never restored...a Church of the Latter Rain.

A hint of romance. Both a kind neighbor and a TV celebrity and noted herpetologist befriend Clara.

And snakes. As in other novels, Bolton has well researched the other villains of this story...snakes. She lists five tomes of snake science in the acknowlegements along with a special thank you to the curator of lower vertebrates and invertebrates at the Chester Zoo. She also imagines a improbable grass snake swarm in chilling prose:

"How best to describe what happened next? It was though I were in the midst of a wide, swift river. Water was rushing towards me, ebbing and swirling occasionally but...flowing relently onwards...a field of wind-blown grass. I watched that flow of - water...grass...what on earth was it? - coming towards me.
Snakes...dozens of them...maybe hundreds. They were rippling through the long grass like ribbons flowing from a child's streamer. Their bodies gleamed slick and wet, shining in the moonlight. They moved over the land with a collective purpose...
It was a grass-snake swarm. Young snakes, slim as pencils, moved alongside adults over five feet long. I saw dark snakes, pale snakes, could even make out the markings on their backs...It was beautiful, extraordinary; quite wonderful..." (219-220)

Bolton's imaginative prose is beautiful, extraordinary and wonderful, too. She is indeed the high priestess of modern gothic crime.