A review by myjourneywithbooks
The Vanished Days by Susanna Kearsley

adventurous mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I wasn't sure what exactly I was getting into when I started reading The Vanished Days but that quote from Diana Gabaldon on the cover had me apprehensive that I might find it to be something like Outlander, half the pages filled with smut and a terrible bore (I couldn't even bring myself to finish that one).

I was therefore pleasantly surprised in the extreme to find that The Vanished Days read nothing like Outlander. Instead, it was a beautiful and thoughtfully put-together story about a young woman named Lily who is trying to prove the authenticity of her marriage in order to claim an inheritance,  and Sergeant Adam Williamson, who is charged with investigating her claims. 

There are two timelines here, both in the past as the whole story is being told retrospectively by Adam, some time in his old age. The first timeline is in 1707, told in the first person by Adam when he is recruited to investigate if Lily really was married to the now deceased sailor James Graeme. The second timeline starts in the 1680s and works its way forward as Adam's digging around slowly begins to build a picture of Lily's life from the time she was a little girl.

The story takes its time getting a move on and sometimes seems to meander but never once lagged or had me feeling bored. Of the two timelines, I found myself looking forward more to the one about Lily's history but the other timeline had its own intrigue, with the mystery surrounding the investigation. 

Set during the Jacobite revolution in Scotland, the book provided a bit of an introduction to the Scottish history of the time, and the clashes between those aligned differently when it came to religion and politics. 

There was something charming about the main characters, the setting and the author's writing, that just pulled me right in. There is a nice twist towards the end, though it wasn't as convincing as I would have liked, given how some of the previous parts of the book played out. 

Definitely a book I'd recommend if you like historical fiction with a dash of clean romance, mystery and political intrigue.