This was the first book I’ve read by Emma Rous, and if her earlier book is as good as this one, I definitely want to go back and read that one, too.
Told in dual timelines, we learn the story of Raven Hall, an old, isolated manor. In 1988, Beth Soames is left with the Averells (after her family is killed in a car accident) to be a companion for their daughter, Nina. However, when they start asking Beth to pretend to be Nina, things get weird. In 2019, Sadie Langton is a struggling actress when she is invited to play the part of a guest at a weekend murder mystery party at the previously abandoned (and fire-damaged) Raven Hall. It soon becomes clear, though, that there’s something strange going on, and nothing is what it seems.
I really liked the story itself. I definitely find myself drawn to dual timeline books, and this one did a particularly good job of eventually putting it all together for the reader. Personally, I enjoyed the Beth-Nina chapters more than the later timeline, but they both added to the story. The relationship between Beth and the Averells was really creepy, and I really thought that part could have gotten a lot darker than it did. Most of the twists came in the later timeline, and while some were obvious, there were a couple right at the end that I didn’t see coming that were a bit jaw-dropping.
What I had the biggest issue with was the information about cystic fibrosis. Before being killed in the car crash, her brother had cf. Beth remembered him using the Vest all the time for his airway clearance, but the Vest wasn’t invented until 1988, which is the year when Beth was orphaned, so her brother wouldn’t have been able to use it for years. Besides that, the UK has never adopted the Vest as a standard part of cf treatment; it’s really only popular in the United States, even now. It would have been all manual percussion therapy or PEP. Yes, I’m the random person who has a child with cf and knows this stuff, but this wouldn’t have been that hard to research.
So to recap, really enjoyed the mystery. Appreciated the awareness for cf, I just wish it was more accurate.
Thank you to Goodreads Giveaway and Berkley for providing me with a free copy of this book. It has not influenced my opinion.