The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis | Release Day Historical Fiction

The Hounding is out today!

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The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis

Released August 5, 2025

Source: Netgalley

Get it at your local library or see more @ Goodreads

All it takes is one sonofabitch to stir up an entire village. Grrrr.

The Hounding is a historical fiction novel about five sisters living on a farm in a small village filled with superstitious people. The sisters have been raised by their grandparents after being orphaned and are mourning their recently deceased grandmother. Many of the townsfolk are wary of them because they’re not demure, mild-mannered creatures. Their grandfather has allowed them to run free and wild. They’re a little loud, they laugh freely, and they keep themselves to themselves. So, OF COURSE, that makes some of the local men feel a certain way. One day their grieving is mistaken for howling and rumors spread that they are able to change into dogs. They then get blamed for everything ailing the town.

It’s an infuriating look at human nature but it makes for an interesting read. I loved learning more about these unconventional siblings, their lovely grandfather who fears he’s failed them, and the decent men and boys in the community. There are some beautifully written passages here.

“He and his wife had brought them up as they had brought up their own son with interests and dreams. Perhaps it had been a mistake, he thought. To let them believe they could reach beyond what the world expected of them, the world expected so little.”

If that doesn’t break your heart, I don’t know what will. When compassion and freedom and equality are seen as a flaw/impossibility for some, it allows the dredges of humanity to act on their worst urges.

Anyhow, some terrible things happen here but they’re very much implied and not on the page which was perfectly fine by me because I was absolutely not in the mood to read that kind of explicit detail. I thought during reading, and especially after I finished reading this book, that turning into a dog wouldn’t be the worst thing in their world and also in this one because people can be atrocious.

I see this book being compared to a lot of things, but it kept giving me shades of We Have Always Lived in the Castle and I’m sticking with that mood. Most of it was its own thing and I’m glad to have listened to it on audio. The narrator has a lovely cadence that suited the time period and material.

I received my audio copy from Netgalley after my very long absence from ARC reviews and I’m glad I chose this one. This review, like all of the reviews I write, are nothing but my initial feelings and gut reactions after having finished.

Final Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Publisher Plot Synopsis 

The Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides in this haunting debut about five sisters in a small village in eighteenth century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs.

Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbed to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before.

The truth is that though the inhabitants of Little Nettlebed have never much liked the Mansfield girls—a little odd, think some; a little high on themselves, perhaps—they’ve always had plenty to say about them. As the rotating perspectives of five villagers quickly make clear, now is no exception. Even if local belief in witchcraft is waning, an aversion to difference is as widespread as ever, and these conflicting narratives all point to the same ultimate conclusion: something isn’t right in Little Nettlebed, and the sisters will be the ones to pay for it.

As relevant today as any time before, The Hounding celebrates the wild breaks from convention we’re all sometimes pulled toward, and wonders if, in a world like this one, it isn’t safer to be a dog than an unusual young girl.