Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde, MyShelf.com
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Rose Golightly, the narrator, and her siblings have traveled up from their Devonshire home to attend the wedding of their cousin to the Earl of Hareton's daughter. Everything seems wrong from the start. The once-palatial house has fallen into disrepair. Lord Hareton and his family have become strangely religious. The only high spot seems to be the gorgeous Lord Strang and his twin brother Gervase Kerre who have both scandalized society by their exploits. But there is to be even more adventure very soon - of a more murderous nature - and everything is going to be turned upside-down.
This book - despite a somewhat confusing initial few pages when it isn't overly obvious who is who - gets off to a cracking pace. It is hard to resist a spooky old house with its decayed grandeur, murders and romance. This book has all of this and more. Rose is a resourceful heroine and Lord Strang manages to be more approachable and appealing to modern tastes than the inevitable alpha male, which lifts the book away from being another battle-of-the-sexes tussle. The book's main fault is in flagging in the middle as the house is explored from top to bottom, a romance blossoms without sparkling and the murder is solved in a rather desultory manner. It could have stood some editing and a little more of the excitement that had me gripping it unable to put it down at the beginning. Nonetheless this is a fine debut novel and it will be interesting indeed to read the next installment of the exploits of the two main characters.