Helpful Score: 6
First Line: I lost my only sister in the last days of November.
A devastated Eva Ward is given her sister's ashes by Katrina's husband, Bill, with the proviso that Eva take them to the place where his wife was happiest. Momentarily confused, Eva suddenly remembers Trelowarth House, a centuries-old manor house high on a hill overlooking the sea in Cornwall. She and her sister had been happy visiting there as children, and Katrina's first love lived there still.
Welcomed to Trelowarth, Eva decides to spend the summer there, intending to find a local cottage to rent in the autumn, but almost immediately she finds herself seeing paths where none had existed and hearing voices in the adjacent room when no one is there. When she actually finds herself in Trelowarth House in 1715 and meeting its owner, Daniel Butler, Eva has to admit that these aren't simple hallucinations. Daniel, a successful smuggler, is secretly planning to join in a rebellion against the newly crowned King George. As he and Eva try to come to terms with Eva's time traveling, they fall in love. Eva has a decision to make: in which time does she truly belong?
For me, Susanna Kearsley is the queen of romantic suspense. Her Cornish setting is wonderful and the perfect backdrop to both time periods. Twenty-first-century and eighteenth-century secondary characters add richness to the story, and have the added bonus of helping to tug the reader in both directions. When I was reading a modern segment, I wondered what was happening to the characters in the eighteenth century, and when I was back in their time, I wondered about the modern characters. Every chapter was engrossing.
In some books featuring time travel, one period always seems to be stronger and more interesting than the other, but not in Kearsley's books. She knows how to keep a reader's interest throughout her story. I'm not known to read many novels in which a strong element of romance is present because too many writers think they have to include steamy sex scenes to convey how strongly the characters are in love. Kearsley knows how to convey strong emotions and physicality without having anything throb or glisten or heave.
If you're in the mood for a story with a strong sense of place, a cast of wonderful characters, a plot with surprises, time travel and romance, I have just one piece of advice: Seek out The Rose Garden, and when you're done reading it, seek out the rest of Susanna Kearsley's novels.
A devastated Eva Ward is given her sister's ashes by Katrina's husband, Bill, with the proviso that Eva take them to the place where his wife was happiest. Momentarily confused, Eva suddenly remembers Trelowarth House, a centuries-old manor house high on a hill overlooking the sea in Cornwall. She and her sister had been happy visiting there as children, and Katrina's first love lived there still.
Welcomed to Trelowarth, Eva decides to spend the summer there, intending to find a local cottage to rent in the autumn, but almost immediately she finds herself seeing paths where none had existed and hearing voices in the adjacent room when no one is there. When she actually finds herself in Trelowarth House in 1715 and meeting its owner, Daniel Butler, Eva has to admit that these aren't simple hallucinations. Daniel, a successful smuggler, is secretly planning to join in a rebellion against the newly crowned King George. As he and Eva try to come to terms with Eva's time traveling, they fall in love. Eva has a decision to make: in which time does she truly belong?
For me, Susanna Kearsley is the queen of romantic suspense. Her Cornish setting is wonderful and the perfect backdrop to both time periods. Twenty-first-century and eighteenth-century secondary characters add richness to the story, and have the added bonus of helping to tug the reader in both directions. When I was reading a modern segment, I wondered what was happening to the characters in the eighteenth century, and when I was back in their time, I wondered about the modern characters. Every chapter was engrossing.
In some books featuring time travel, one period always seems to be stronger and more interesting than the other, but not in Kearsley's books. She knows how to keep a reader's interest throughout her story. I'm not known to read many novels in which a strong element of romance is present because too many writers think they have to include steamy sex scenes to convey how strongly the characters are in love. Kearsley knows how to convey strong emotions and physicality without having anything throb or glisten or heave.
If you're in the mood for a story with a strong sense of place, a cast of wonderful characters, a plot with surprises, time travel and romance, I have just one piece of advice: Seek out The Rose Garden, and when you're done reading it, seek out the rest of Susanna Kearsley's novels.
Helpful Score: 2
Losing the last of her family - her older sister, Eva returns to Cornwall where they spent their childhood. Eva's husband had brought her sister's ashes to her to spread where Katrina had been happy. Leaving her job and apartment in LA, Eva travels to Cornwall to spread the ashes but unusual events begin to happen. She has experiences dating to the 1700s and discovers that she is traveling in time to fall in love.
As Eva falls deeper and deeper in love with Daniel she discovers a truth she did not know. The spreading of her sister's ashes in Cornwall was a mistake. They should have been spread where she and her husband, the love of her life, were happiest. As she becomes more involved with the lives of Daniel and Jack Butler she meets someone else she knows who time travels, and understands her heart and the danger she faces in her experiences.
As Eva falls deeper and deeper in love with Daniel she discovers a truth she did not know. The spreading of her sister's ashes in Cornwall was a mistake. They should have been spread where she and her husband, the love of her life, were happiest. As she becomes more involved with the lives of Daniel and Jack Butler she meets someone else she knows who time travels, and understands her heart and the danger she faces in her experiences.
Helpful Score: 1
***SEMI SPOILER ALERT***
I normally don't write reviews because I normally don't read them I like to form my own opinions on books but this book deserves me making a note.
I don't know what made me request this book its not my normal read but I'm so glad I did. Never have I read a romance that didn't contain the XXX stuff. This was beautifully written and so magically spun that any of that would have ruined the moment.
While I found it a slow read for the first chapter or so (so much so that I thought of putting it aside to pick up at a later time) once the story started to unfold I couldn't put it down.
The ending (which I won't reveal) was a twist that made me think wow I didn't see that coming.
The author did a beautiful job of portraying not only the charters in vivid detail but also the setting and the objects within the work. I found myself visualizing things as the characters saw them and I felt I could see what they were seeing.
Beautiful and I wish the store wouldn't have ended.
I will look forward to more of Susanna Kearsley's work and know I will be rereading this work more years to come.
I normally don't write reviews because I normally don't read them I like to form my own opinions on books but this book deserves me making a note.
I don't know what made me request this book its not my normal read but I'm so glad I did. Never have I read a romance that didn't contain the XXX stuff. This was beautifully written and so magically spun that any of that would have ruined the moment.
While I found it a slow read for the first chapter or so (so much so that I thought of putting it aside to pick up at a later time) once the story started to unfold I couldn't put it down.
The ending (which I won't reveal) was a twist that made me think wow I didn't see that coming.
The author did a beautiful job of portraying not only the charters in vivid detail but also the setting and the objects within the work. I found myself visualizing things as the characters saw them and I felt I could see what they were seeing.
Beautiful and I wish the store wouldn't have ended.
I will look forward to more of Susanna Kearsley's work and know I will be rereading this work more years to come.
Wonderful book! Time travel and romance - what else can you desire?
** spoiler alert **
This was my first adventure with Susanna Kearsley, and I was not disappointed. Well, okay full disclosure, I was a tiny bit disappointed but not a majority. This gets a solid 3 and a half stars from me.
The story starts off well enough when we meet Eva Ward. She is a publicist in Los Angeles and shies away from the spotlight that her sister, Katrina, thrives in. When Katrina dies, Eva goes on a search to the home where they spent their summers as children in hopes of finding her way back home again. So far all of this is good and I was enthralled and ready to continue on.
Soon, Eva realizes that she hasn't found home at Trelowarth, its just a place and holds no real connection for her anymore. Then she starts to hear things, voices that she can't quite place and footsteps when the adjoining room should be empty. When she walks into her bedroom one day to find a man holding a dagger, who insists that she is not real, and then promptly disappears again Eva decides that she is losing her mind. Slowly she starts to travel to this place, that she quickly identifies as the year 1715, for longer periods of time and meets the residents of Trelowarth in that time. And that dagger wielding man, Daniel Butler, starts to steal her heart in her brief visits to the past. She finds herself increasingly unwilling to leave the past though she has no real control over the matter.
So far so good for the plot, I am loving it and can't wait to see how it works out! But then the ending just lost me. We learn that Claire (Eva's sort of Aunt) is actually a time traveler too...she came from the future and met and fell in love with her deceased husband too. And she knows all about Eva and her destiny to marry Daniel and live comfortably in the past. But then we start to learn that the "ghost story" around Trelowarth, called the Grey Lady, was actually Eva. And Claire heard about it from Oliver...in the future. Oliver who is going to marry her stepdaughter after the object of his affection, Eva, disappears into the past. Claire tells us that she will tell Eva all about her future with Daniel, which is exactly what I wanted to hear, but I didn't get to hear it! I was so frustrated that she says she is going to tell Eva everything, but then the reader conveniently gets to hear none of it. I waited the whole book to find that out, and I didn't even get to read it. I was thoroughly confused by the whole Claire, Grey Lady, and Oliver thing and I still have no idea why it was important at all. I would have must rather skipped that whole confusing drivel and heard what I really wanted...the end of the love story of Daniel and Eva.
All in all, I enjoyed this book a lot. But the ending just left me feeling deprived and confused. I was led along on this journey of love only to have the ending of that journey denied to me. And instead it was replaced with something that I didn't really understand and didn't feel was important in the first place. A disappointing end to an otherwise great story.
Note: All reviews also posted to my Goodreads profile.
This was my first adventure with Susanna Kearsley, and I was not disappointed. Well, okay full disclosure, I was a tiny bit disappointed but not a majority. This gets a solid 3 and a half stars from me.
The story starts off well enough when we meet Eva Ward. She is a publicist in Los Angeles and shies away from the spotlight that her sister, Katrina, thrives in. When Katrina dies, Eva goes on a search to the home where they spent their summers as children in hopes of finding her way back home again. So far all of this is good and I was enthralled and ready to continue on.
Soon, Eva realizes that she hasn't found home at Trelowarth, its just a place and holds no real connection for her anymore. Then she starts to hear things, voices that she can't quite place and footsteps when the adjoining room should be empty. When she walks into her bedroom one day to find a man holding a dagger, who insists that she is not real, and then promptly disappears again Eva decides that she is losing her mind. Slowly she starts to travel to this place, that she quickly identifies as the year 1715, for longer periods of time and meets the residents of Trelowarth in that time. And that dagger wielding man, Daniel Butler, starts to steal her heart in her brief visits to the past. She finds herself increasingly unwilling to leave the past though she has no real control over the matter.
So far so good for the plot, I am loving it and can't wait to see how it works out! But then the ending just lost me. We learn that Claire (Eva's sort of Aunt) is actually a time traveler too...she came from the future and met and fell in love with her deceased husband too. And she knows all about Eva and her destiny to marry Daniel and live comfortably in the past. But then we start to learn that the "ghost story" around Trelowarth, called the Grey Lady, was actually Eva. And Claire heard about it from Oliver...in the future. Oliver who is going to marry her stepdaughter after the object of his affection, Eva, disappears into the past. Claire tells us that she will tell Eva all about her future with Daniel, which is exactly what I wanted to hear, but I didn't get to hear it! I was so frustrated that she says she is going to tell Eva everything, but then the reader conveniently gets to hear none of it. I waited the whole book to find that out, and I didn't even get to read it. I was thoroughly confused by the whole Claire, Grey Lady, and Oliver thing and I still have no idea why it was important at all. I would have must rather skipped that whole confusing drivel and heard what I really wanted...the end of the love story of Daniel and Eva.
All in all, I enjoyed this book a lot. But the ending just left me feeling deprived and confused. I was led along on this journey of love only to have the ending of that journey denied to me. And instead it was replaced with something that I didn't really understand and didn't feel was important in the first place. A disappointing end to an otherwise great story.
Note: All reviews also posted to my Goodreads profile.
