Review: 'The Grief Nurse' by Angie Spoto

What if you had the ability to take other people's grief away? And what if that ability determined the entire course of your life? Lynx is a Grief Nurse for the wealthy Asters and she is there to take their pain, to make them Bright. But what if she wants more? And what if people start dying and suddenly everything is in danger? I enjoyed The Grief Nurse but did find myself wanting it to go a little further, a little deeper. Thanks to Black & White and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

Pub. Date: Black & White Publishing
Publisher: 27/05/2025

Imagine you could be rid of your sadness, your anxiety, your heartache, your fear. Imagine you could take those feelings from others and turn them into something beautiful. Imagine the power that would give you, how valuable you would be to others...

Lynx is a Grief Nurse. Kept by the Asters, a wealthy, influential family, to ensure they're never troubled by negative emotions. Kept at their manor house, limited to its walls, plush rooms and the elegant grounds on the family's Scottish island, she knows no other life.

When news arrives that the Asters' eldest son is dead, Lynx does what she can to alleviate their sorrow. But as guests flock to the island for the wake, bringing their own secrets, lies and grief, tensions rise and Lynx finds herself trapped at the center of a family tearing itself apart.

But the son's death is not the last and the island soon becomes a vortex of jealousy, suspicion, hatred and tragedy - with Lynx caught in the middle. With romance, intrigue and spectacular gothic world-building, this spellbinding novel, set in a subtly reimagined 1920s Scotland, marks the debut of an extraordinary new voice in fiction.

I work with emotions in literature and I have found that the more I study them, the more I become aware of my own and what purpose they have. Our emotions are not just random physical experiences or mental imaginings, they have an active purpose in allowing us to live our lives, pursue our goals, and stand up for ourselves. Our emotions are key in also getting us to do the things we need to do. Because of my background in thinking about emotions, I was fascinated by what Spoto explores in The Grief Nurse. Who are we, without our grief? Is there something good to be found in the hardest of emotions? Would it not be better if we could all just have our grief taken from us, be it the small upsets over a dinner party or the enormous tide of pain at the loss of a child? Spoto works with these questions in intriguing ways and the novel definitely had me thinking on this in different ways. I would have loved perhaps a more thorough deep-dive, but that's because I love the topic anyway. I think for a reader not as obsessed as me, the way in which Spoto explores it will be very intriguing.

Lynx is a Grief Nurse, marked by her pale, white hair. She works for the Asters, a well-known family who aren't quite as wealthy as they used to be. Tragedy has struck the family, with the death of the eldest son, and so Lynx is busy keeping them Bright and as far from feeling anything bad as possible. But more deaths are coming and secrets are about to be revealed. I enjoyed a lot of aspects of The Grief Nurse and one of the main ones was just the idea of a grief nurse itself and how Spoto established this within the world. There is a lot of solid world-building here, as Spoto ties the existence of grief nurses in with her world's class system, gender expectations, and how it handles emotions in general. I especially enjoyed how Spoto described Lynx' own experience of this grief and how it feeds her. However, because being a grief nurse is like living in a gilded cage, I really wanted Spoto to take it a little further. The resolution of the plot felt, in some ways, too neat considering how messy, in a good way, Lynx' relationship with the Asters and with her own position is. There is a complexity there, which gets built up in the first half of the novel, which then fell a little flat for me. 

This was my first read by Angie Spoto and I loved how descriptive her writing was. Whether she was describing the Asters' beautiful mansion, the island it is set on, the grief taken by Lynx, or Lynx' own memories, there was the perfect amount of detail. It all came down to these descriptions of light, texture, and smell that made reading The Grief Nurse a really sumptuous experience. I did also like Lnx herself as a protagonist, hitting the right kind of naivety for someone whose whole life has been quite limited in a way, but also someone who is developing thoughts about themselves and their society. As I mentioned above, I did feel like this development was undersold a little by the end of the novel, although the last few pages were beautiful. In a way The Grief Nurse felt less like an adult novel, which it is billed at, than a YA novel. There's nothing wrong with that, but the labeling did mean that I had slightly different expectations going in. I will absolutely be keeping an eye out for future novels by Angie Spoto because I loved how rich her writing felt. 

I give this novel...

3/5 Universes (upped to 4)!

For what it is, The Grief Nurse was a good read. I enjoyed the world Spoto creates and Lynx is also a very intriguing main character. However, I just wish Spoto would have gone a little further with it, but it is still a lovely, beautifully written book.