Stefani K. (stef140) reviewed on 4/19/2012 + 28 more book reviews

** 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.

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