I read this book because I'd heard the author discuss it on Radio National and thought it sounded interesting.

I believe that this novel has been favourably compared with "Rebecca" - but I see absolutely no grounds for this.

It's a well written, but predictable, melodramatic and slightly dull story. The narrative jumps around in time, which made getting into it in the early stages a bit tedious.

The descriptive writing is lovely in parts, but the characters failed to enchant. Moody, grumpy Theo was a bore and modern day Hattie was bland and passive in the extreme. The histrionic plot was too long winded (the book could be pruned by at least 100 pages) and it didn't take me very long at all to work out the 'big secret', making the rest of the plot easy to forecast.

Not my cup of tea at all, really.