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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I won this book from Goodreads & I really wanted to read it The description sounded like it would be a good mystery set in a creepy house. What it ended up being is the same old tired formula of girl getting pregnant & the families over reaction to it. Not my kind of story at all. Deeply disappointed.
Us moderns tend to think 'romance' and associate it with love story, but it routes its way through the Romantic movement, encompassing a variety of artistic forms. The swinging pendulum of aesthetics away from the Enlightenment and rationalism, Romanticism was everything...not that. Its emphasis on sensation, feeling, and mystery is what cements the Gothic and the Gothic novel as we know it today. (Yes, it's more complicated than that, don't at me.)
I kept finding reasons not to like Black Rabbit Hall as I read it. The dialog is unrealistic, always feeling like dialog, and the same can be said to a lesser extent of the characters. The playing around with tense is jarring, and the interweaving the past and present narratives does not work. This is an instance where telling the story in order would have made for a better read. The red herrings are so red that they cease to be herring.
And yet this is an amazing read, because it captures the romantic sensibility. There are no dry sections. Chase fills everything with constant emotion, most notably menace and dread, but really the whole spectrum is here, of love and hate and glee. The house and the grounds feel like another character, and everything is about the intensity of feeling between the characters and how wonderful and disastrous that is. It is intensely sensual, and I don't mean erotic (those scenes are honestly some of the tamer ones in the book on the whole) but full of sensation, again in the traditional use of the word.
But then there's the ending. Bad endings are like unhappy families, in that we think that they are all different, but really they tend to fall into a few categories. Here
So it gives the feeling with a transition this abrupt that the author either got tired, got bored, or hit the requisite page count and closed out. But I feel more like having already hit so much emotional material for the past however many pages, the author thought that they could get away with something more summary. It really does not work, and is, as stated above, probably one of the reasons why a more conventional telling of the story would have worked better, because then the whole modern plot would work as the falling action. As opposed to teasing things that are pretty obvious.
But if this is bad, this is the kind of bad that I want more of, where it is a page burner not because you need to know what happens next, but because of the depth of the emotional investment that the book creates in its people and the sheer highs and lows that it takes you to.
I kept finding reasons not to like Black Rabbit Hall as I read it. The dialog is unrealistic, always feeling like dialog, and the same can be said to a lesser extent of the characters. The playing around with tense is jarring, and the interweaving the past and present narratives does not work. This is an instance where telling the story in order would have made for a better read. The red herrings are so red that they cease to be herring.
And yet this is an amazing read, because it captures the romantic sensibility. There are no dry sections. Chase fills everything with constant emotion, most notably menace and dread, but really the whole spectrum is here, of love and hate and glee. The house and the grounds feel like another character, and everything is about the intensity of feeling between the characters and how wonderful and disastrous that is. It is intensely sensual, and I don't mean erotic (those scenes are honestly some of the tamer ones in the book on the whole) but full of sensation, again in the traditional use of the word.
But then there's the ending. Bad endings are like unhappy families, in that we think that they are all different, but really they tend to fall into a few categories. Here
Spoiler
you have two problems in concert. First, I feel like the author was set on having a happy ending. And it is a little undeserved. But I will buy it. But that turns into a downer with the second problem, which is the lack of denouement. It hits the climax, which feels like it is over the top due to the intense emotional caliber of the whole novel, but has something of a fridge logic effect due to the absence of...well, anything, really. Functionally, you could have cut the last chapter and put in 'and they all lived happily ever after' to a more satisfying effect. The incest plot, for instance, being resolved in under a chapter has got to be one of the more cowardly moves I've seen from an author. And it is all like that.So it gives the feeling with a transition this abrupt that the author either got tired, got bored, or hit the requisite page count and closed out. But I feel more like having already hit so much emotional material for the past however many pages, the author thought that they could get away with something more summary. It really does not work, and is, as stated above, probably one of the reasons why a more conventional telling of the story would have worked better, because then the whole modern plot would work as the falling action. As opposed to teasing things that are pretty obvious.
But if this is bad, this is the kind of bad that I want more of, where it is a page burner not because you need to know what happens next, but because of the depth of the emotional investment that the book creates in its people and the sheer highs and lows that it takes you to.
This book originally had me thinking it was a full-blown horror, but it ended up having some great gothic horror vibes mixed with a haunting family history that quickly fell apart, just like Black Rabbit Hall. I initially found Lorna to be a teensy-bit annoying as her obsession with Black Rabbit Hall felt either too coincidental or flat out insane with the initial vibes the house gave off. I fell in love with Amber, her desire to live in the present mixed with her inevitable pull to Toby and his inability to let go of the past. It seemed almost achingly fitting that in his inevitable exile, Amber was able to finally live a complete life.
The only villain here seemed to be Caroline in all her conniving, self-centered glory. Caroline is certainly up there in my list of "most hated characters of all time". Her slow ruin of Hugo, the graceless tearing apart of the Alton family, her unforgivable attempt at lying about her son's parentage, and her imprisonment of pregnant Amber are only a small list of her crimes.
A testament to the age old saying "secrets can kill", this book embodies everything the period encapsulated: an upheaval of the old ways of class and society life mixed with the tragedies these rules inflicted on the families of the time.
The only villain here seemed to be Caroline in all her conniving, self-centered glory. Caroline is certainly up there in my list of "most hated characters of all time". Her slow ruin of Hugo, the graceless tearing apart of the Alton family, her unforgivable attempt at lying about her son's parentage, and her imprisonment of pregnant Amber are only a small list of her crimes.
A testament to the age old saying "secrets can kill", this book embodies everything the period encapsulated: an upheaval of the old ways of class and society life mixed with the tragedies these rules inflicted on the families of the time.
The kindle says I'm 25% of the way through. I don't care enough to keep going. Sorry.
Mystery done right. Loved this. Not as dark as I usually like them.
This is one of the best books I've ever read! The moment I finished it I wanted to flip back to the start and read it again! It is utterly gorgeous! A mystery set over two time periods, the late 1960s and the present day, it's about an old house nicknamed Black Rabbit Hall and the dysfunctional family who used to live there. Atmospheric and completely spellbinding, it reminded me of Daphne du Maurier and Dodie Smith. I absolutely loved it!
The story starts in the present day, with Lorna and her fiancé Jon trying to find a manor house in Cornwall called Pencraw Hall, because Lorna saw a photo on the Internet and wants to get married there. As soon as she sees the house she becomes obsessed by it. Ignoring the fact that it's practically derelict and owned by a very strange old lady, she arranges to stay there over one weekend - without Jon - and is determined to learn its secrets.
In the 1960s Amber Alton spends every holiday at Black Rabbit Hall, along with her parents and three siblings: her twin Toby, Barney and Kitty. Allowed to run wild, it's only a matter of time before tragedy strikes.
I think I enjoyed this story so much because of the setting - the idea of a house with a hydrangea growing through the ballroom floor! - it's beautifully written and the characters were so well drawn, particularly the children. I especially loved Amber, Toby and Lucian.
Black Rabbit Hall is a hard one to categorise, genre-wise. It's definitely a mystery but it's also part gothic romance, part coming-of-age story. I think it would appeal to fans of Daphne du Maurier and Kate Morton, and anyone who loves stories about dark family secrets set in spooky old houses. And if you do enjoy this one, Eve Chase's second book, The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde (USA: The Wildling Sisters) is also excellent! Recommended - but I think you guessed that already!
The story starts in the present day, with Lorna and her fiancé Jon trying to find a manor house in Cornwall called Pencraw Hall, because Lorna saw a photo on the Internet and wants to get married there. As soon as she sees the house she becomes obsessed by it. Ignoring the fact that it's practically derelict and owned by a very strange old lady, she arranges to stay there over one weekend - without Jon - and is determined to learn its secrets.
In the 1960s Amber Alton spends every holiday at Black Rabbit Hall, along with her parents and three siblings: her twin Toby, Barney and Kitty. Allowed to run wild, it's only a matter of time before tragedy strikes.
I think I enjoyed this story so much because of the setting - the idea of a house with a hydrangea growing through the ballroom floor! - it's beautifully written and the characters were so well drawn, particularly the children. I especially loved Amber, Toby and Lucian.
Black Rabbit Hall is a hard one to categorise, genre-wise. It's definitely a mystery but it's also part gothic romance, part coming-of-age story. I think it would appeal to fans of Daphne du Maurier and Kate Morton, and anyone who loves stories about dark family secrets set in spooky old houses. And if you do enjoy this one, Eve Chase's second book, The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde (USA: The Wildling Sisters) is also excellent! Recommended - but I think you guessed that already!
For anyone who loves Kate Morton-style, parallel stories that twist around each other and tie together at the end.