Ivy Radcliffe has lost the last of her family to the Great War, so it doesn’t take a great deal of thought when she is told she is the last heir to Blackwood Abbey. Her father having been a far-off cousin, and nothing keeping her in London, she travels away to her new home where she meets the suspicious servants, the Hewitts and Ralph.
But there is a locked door, and behind that locked door is a library. Books have always been a comfort to Ivy, but no one has told her about the library nor why it was locked. It's not long before she begins to feel that something else is inside the library.
I have not read any of Hester Fox’s novels prior to this one.
I wanted so badly to like this novel, and yet I cannot stand it. I hated Ivy and the Hewitts. The only good character was Ralph, and his hands were tied the majority of the time. I didn’t understand how someone could know that something was wrong with their health and do nothing about it. I didn’t understand how the Hewitts could demand Ivy act or do something in a certain way and expect to not give explanations. Nothing about their personalities and the actions they took made sense.
The novel’s pace is slow, and the premise seems to have gone off the rails. I was expecting more from the library and less from the evil doers. When you dislike the people as much as I do, then the rest of the book is harder to concentrate on. The prologue at the beginning didn’t make any sense, nor did it seem to have anything to do with the rest of the action of the story.
Overall, I rate this novel 2 out of 5 stars.
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