Review: Bradstreet Gate by Robin Kirman

Overview:

 

Georgia, Charlie and Alice each arrive at Harvard with hopeful visions of what the future will hold. But when, just before graduation, a classmate is found murdered on campus, they find themselves facing a cruel and unanticipated new reality. Moreover, a charismatic professor who has loomed large in their lives is suspected of the crime. Though his guilt or innocence remains uncertain, the unsettling questions raised by the case force the three friends to take a deeper look at their tangled relationship. Their bond has been defined by the secrets they’ve kept from one another—Charlie’s love and Alice’s envy, Georgia’s mysterious affair—and over the course of the next decade, as they grapple with the challenges of adulthood and witness the unraveling of a teacher's once-charmed life, they must reckon with their own deceits and shortcomings, each desperately in search of answers and the chance to be forgiven.

A relentless, incisive, and keenly intelligent novel about promise, disappointment, and the often tenuous bonds of friendship, Bradstreet Gate is the auspicious debut of a tremendously talented new writer.

 

Review:

 

This book was a little perplexing for me. I found myself really engrossed in the characters, and what I assumed would be a clear solution to the books mystery: what happened to Julie Patel? Of course, reading the book's description, it's really about the intertwined lives of three students and a professor at Harvard; but the death of another student is the backstory that keeps alluding to more. Without a clear resolution to this secondary story, it feels like the book was somehow cut off. I found myself wanting more from each character. It began questioning their motives and who they really were after spending so many pages with them.  I also felt that the jump between college and ten years later was an interesting plot device not fully realized. Somehow the characters lost their depth as they got older.

Bradford Gate was very well written, and I enjoyed the book, I just felt it was missing a few elements to make it an excellent book. I was looking for a big reveal, and the book ended quite quietly.

 

* I received an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: The Children's Home by Charles Lambert

Overview:

 

For fans of Shirley Jackson, Neil Gaiman, Roald Dahl, and Edward Gorey, a beguiling and disarming debut novel from an award-winning British author about a mysterious group of children who appear to a disfigured recluse and his country doctor—and the startling revelations their behavior evokes.

In a sprawling estate, willfully secluded, lives Morgan Fletcher, the disfigured heir to a fortune of mysterious origins. Morgan spends his days in quiet study, avoiding his reflection in mirrors and the lake at the end of his garden. One day, two children, Moira and David, appear. Morgan takes them in, giving them free reign of the mansion he shares with his housekeeper Engel. Then more children begin to show up.

Dr. Crane, the town physician and Morgan’s lone tether to the outside world, is as taken with the children as Morgan, and begins to spend more time in Morgan’s library. But the children behave strangely. They show a prescient understanding of Morgan’s past, and their bizarre discoveries in the mansion attics grow increasingly disturbing. Every day the children seem to disappear into the hidden rooms of the estate, and perhaps, into the hidden corners of Morgan’s mind.

The Children’s Home is a genre-defying, utterly bewitching masterwork, an inversion of modern fairy tales like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Golden Compass, in which children visit faraway lands to accomplish elusive tasks. Lambert writes from the perspective of the visited, weaving elements of psychological suspense, Jamesian stream of consciousness, and neo-gothic horror, to reveal the inescapable effects of abandonment, isolation, and the grotesque—as well as the glimmers of goodness—buried deep within the soul.

 

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Review:

 

Charles Lambert has written a fascinating and engaging  novel. The Children's Home is mystery, history and magical realism rolled into one.  I enjoyed this book a great deal- a fast read. I am still working out all the philosophical and psychological implications in this book. Told through the scope of magical realism, The Children's Home dark underbelly reveals the less flattering side of human nature. I would highly recommend this book for fans of John Connolly and Neil Gaiman.

 

*I received an advanced reader copier in exchange for an honest review.

Recommended: The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl

Overview:

 

In his most enthralling novel yet, the critically acclaimed author Matthew Pearl reopens one of literary history’s greatest mysteries. The Last Dickens is a tale filled with the dazzling twists and turns, the unerring period details, and the meticulous research that thrilled readers of the bestsellers The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow.

Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’s untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await the arrival of Dickens’s unfinished novel. But when Daniel’s body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that he hopes will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel’s killer.

Danger and intrigue abound on the journey to England, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniel’s older sister, to assist him. As they attempt to uncover Dickens’s final mystery, Osgood and Rebecca find themselves racing the clock through a dangerous web of literary lions and drug dealers, sadistic thugs and blue bloods, and competing members of Dickens’s inner circle. They soon realize that understanding Dickens’s lost ending is a matter of life and death, and the hidden key to stopping a murderous mastermind.

Review: The Wanderer in Unknown Realms: A Novella by John Connolly

Overview:

 

"Books alter men, and men, in their turn, alter worlds.”

Soter is a man who has been haunted by World War I. But when he’s sent to investigate the disappearance of Lionel Maudling, the owner of a grand country house whose heir may be accused for his death, he encounters a home that will lead him to nightmares he could have never imagined.

Maudling’s estate houses countless books of every sort—histories, dramas, scientific treatises. But none seems to offer Soter any hint to Maudling’s whereabouts, until he’s led to an arcane London bookseller where the reclusive scholar made his last purchase. What Soter finds at the end of a twisted maze of clues is a book like no other, with a legacy that will put everything he knows in danger…

An inventive horror novella from internationally bestselling author John Connolly, this is a story of madness, of obsession, and of books’ power to change the world.

 

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Review:

 

The Wanderer in Unknown Realms is another example of John Connolly's mastery of the written word and storytelling. This novella was a suspenseful and atmospheric read. The characters so easily conjured.  The Wanderer was a quick read that left me at the edge of my seat and eager to learn what fate awaits Soter.

While the novella falls into the fantasy/magical realism spectrum, the underlying tone is based in reality. Books do spread ideas both inspiring and dangerous. The lines between madness and clarity can be blurred. In many ways I was reminded of Tolkien's manifestation of war in The Lord of the Rings. Is Connolly's Soter's mind war torn, or is he the only one privy to the truth?

Review: The World Before Us by Aislinn Hunter

Overview:

 

When she was just fifteen, smart, sensitive Jane Standen lived through a nightmare: she lost the sweet five-year-old girl she was minding during a walk in the woods. The little girl was never found, leaving her family, and Jane, devastated. Now the grown-up Jane is an archivist at a small London museum that is about to close for lack of funding. As her one last project, she is searching the archives for scraps of information related to another missing person--a woman who disappeared some 125 years ago from a Victorian asylum. As the novel moves back and forth between the museum in contemporary London, the Victorian asylum, and a dilapidated country house that seems to connect both missing people, it unforgettably explores the repercussions of small acts, the power of affection, and the irrepressible vitality of everyday objects and events.
    
Here is a rivetting, gorgeously written novel that powerfully reminds us of the possibility that we are less alone than we might think.  

 

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Review:

The World Before Us is thoroughly engrossing and beautifully written. Told in first-person plural, readers join the group of other-worldly figures who have spent the last twenty years following Jane, in search of who they are.

Inglewood, both contemporary and Victorian, holds the secrets of two missing women, nearly 125 years apart. As Jane gets closer to unraveling the mystery of missing girl N-, she must face her haunted past: the disappearance of five-year-old Lily, while under Jane's care.

Hunter's novel reveals itself  like a microscope flitting in and out of focus. Readers get a glimpse of life through an archivist's eye;  dates, names, and places become the stories of family and friends.  As Jane learns the truth about N, I couldn't help but wonder if Jane- and her followers- would at last make peace with the past.
Again, an excellent, engaging read.

 

* I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review: The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

Overview:

 

A foundling, an old book of dark fairy tales, a secret garden, an aristocratic family, a love denied, and a mystery. The Forgotten Garden is a captivating, atmospheric and compulsively readable story of the past, secrets, family and memory from the international best-selling author Kate Morton.

Cassandra is lost, alone and grieving. Her much loved grandmother, Nell, has just died and Cassandra, her life already shaken by a tragic accident ten years ago, feels like she has lost everything dear to her. But an unexpected and mysterious bequest from Nell turns Cassandra's life upside down and ends up challenging everything she thought she knew about herself and her family.

Inheriting a book of dark and intriguing fairytales written by Eliza Makepeace - the Victorian authoress who disappeared mysteriously in the early twentieth century - Cassandra takes her courage in both hands to follow in the footsteps of Nell on a quest to find out the truth about their history, their family and their past; little knowing that in the process, she will also discover a new life for herself.

 

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Review:

 

An astonishing work, filled with characters you love, hate, sympathize with and resent. Told through voices spanning three generations, this a family mystery that both devastates and inspires. As the reader begins to put the pieces of this puzzle together, one explores the limitless bounds of unconditional love and bears witness to the unspeakable acts of cruelty that selfishness can demand of that love. Through all the turmoil, mystery, and unhappiness the reader emerges from the other side smiling. All is made right, while remaining true to the realities of the world. It allows the reader to believe that in the end all things have a chance to be set right

Review: Secrets of Sloane House by Shelley Gray

Overview:

One woman's search for the truth of her sister's disappearance leads her to deceit and danger in 1893 Chicago.

Rosalind Perry has left her family's rural farm in Wisconsin to work as a housemaid at Sloane House, one of the most elegant mansions in Gilded Age Chicago. However, Rosalind is not there just to earn a living and support her family-she's at Sloane House determined to discover the truth about her sister's mysterious disappearance.

Reid Armstrong is the handsome heir to a silver fortune. However, his family is on the periphery of Chicago's elite because their wealth comes from "new money" obtained from successful mining. Marriage to Veronica Sloane would secure his family's position in society-the lifelong dream of his ailing father.

When Reid begins to realize that Rosalind's life may be in danger, he stops thinking of marriage prospects and concentrates on helping Rosalind. Dark things are afoot in Chicago and, he fears, in Sloane House. If he's not vigilant, Rosalind could pay the price.

Set against the backdrop of Chicago's Gilded Age and the 1893 World's Fair, Secrets of Sloane House takes us on a whirlwind journey of romance and mystery.

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Review:

The first of Shelley Gary's Chicago World's Fair Mystery series, The Secrets of Sloane House has Wisconsin farm girl Rosalind Perry posing a Rosalind Pettit, new housemaid in the prestigious Sloane residence. For Rosalind she has but one purpose, to find out what happened to her sister, Miranda. Miranda was a housemaid in the Sloane mansion before she suddenly disappeared. With the Chicago World's Fair as the backdrop, Rosalind discovers she is a long way from the life she knew.

Based on the book's description, I really expected this book to be more suspenseful than it was. While there was mention of danger, none really materialized. Threatening situations didn't inspire concern, and the final reveal fell pretty flat. I was anticipating a more dramatic reveal and a less predictable outcome. It was difficult to get invested in the characters, beyond Reid Armstong. Also, while there was much mention of the World's Fair, I'm not sure the story was truly reliant on this as a plot point.

All that being said, I am interested to read the second book in this series to how Gray's writing develops.