A brief synopsis
On the eve of the first world war, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. A mysterious woman called the Authoress had promised to look after her - but the Authoress has disappeared without a trace.
On the night of her twenty-first birthday, Nell O'Connor learns a secret that will change her life forever. Decades later, she embarks upon a search for the truth that leads her to the windswept Cornish coast and the strange and beautiful Blackhurst Manor, once owned by the aristocratic Mountrachet family.
On Nell's death, her grand-daughter, Cassandra, comes into an unexpected inheritance. Cliff Cottage and its forgotten garden are notorious amongst the Cornish locals for the secrets they hold - secrets about the doomed Mountrachet family and their ward Eliza Makepeace, a writer of dark Victorian fairytales. It is here that Cassandra will finally uncover the truth about the family, and solve the century-old mystery of a little girl lost.
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This is another hefty tome from the bestelling author of 'The House at Riverton'. The tale meanders back and forth from the early 1900s to 1975 and 2005. I don't usually mind stories that jump around in time, but even for me, this one was a little disjointed. By far the most interesting (to me) part of the book was set in the 1900s and I felt that with a bit of tweaking, one could do away with the most modern characters completely!
It is a tale full of secrets, and it is the unravelling of them that concerns modern day Cassandra, a character I never fully believed in and couldn't bring myself to care about. Fortunately, Eliza and Rose, who live in the 1900s make up for the wishy washy Cassandra, and it their entwined lives that make this book worth reading.
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