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Overall I was disappointed in this novel. The characters and the idea of the story were brilliant but the execution was poor. In a novel structured in this way it’s important (in my opinion) that the reader ‘discovers� the history of the house’s former inhabitants at the same pace as the protagonist. Unfortunately, as a reader, I got to know more about Felicity & Adela than she did and therefore kept forgetting what Evie knew. I wish the author had stuck to the idea of telling the 1858 story though diaries, photos, Empire records and letters rather than throwing in a few ‘real life� chapters from that time. I also got very frustrated because my advance knowledge helped me ‘get� the connections before Evie did so although the author perhaps felt she was building up tension all I felt was an intense frustration.

The history the author gives is fantastic and the sense of time and place feels authentic. I wish the author could have balanced the story with some native characters that had a real voice and also given Mr Singh more of a prominent role, by the time he entered the story in any real way you were speeding through to a very neat and contrived conclusion. Another frustration was in the diaries of Adela, which didn’t have a convincing ‘voice� and were written in much the same way as the main story, with a descriptive storytelling narrative rather than an inner monologue.

As a light read it serves its purpose but it could have been a real triumph and I would have liked to read the novel it could very easily have been.