So, review number two.. Hey! That rhymes.
Tamara Goodwin is a spoiled teenage girl. Living with her mother and father in a fancy big house in Dublin, with her en-suite shower with a plasma TV, she could want for nothing. Then a tragedy occurs and she finds herself stranded at nowhere and not happening, so far away from her old life.
Spending time with her estranged relatives is not her idea of fun, so when the travelling library rolls up, Tamara jumps at the chance to escape. Finding a magical book that tells her more than just a story.
The depth of the characters draw the reader deeper into the story and as Tamara is forced to confront the questions in her life, we’re along for the ride. The twist and turns in this story keep you guessing, right up to the very end with a shocker you just won’t believe. The characters Tamara meets on her journey of self discovery and her relationships with them are complex; Ahern brings them alive as though they could climb right off the page.
The way Ahern describes the castle and the grounds in the story and Tamara’s reaction to it, the reader can feel how she relates, as though she is the ruin, she is the secret garden and the woods. Let’s the reader see a vulnerability to this story’s heroine which is refreshing.
Although I found it slow to start, the more I read the more curious I became and the puzzle becomes more enticing until I was dying to finish the book to uncover the answers to all the questions. I give this book 4 out of 5.
Main Points:
- Fantastic read
- Sucks the reader in with a delicious puzzle
- Great characters
- Unpredictable
Quotes from this book that I love:
“All families have their secrets, most people would never know them, but they know there are spaces, there are gaps where the answers should be, where someone should have sat, where someone used to be. A name that is never uttered or uttered once and never again. We all have our secrets.”
“I think that most people go into bookshops and have no idea what they want to buy. Somehow the books sit there, almost magically willing people to pick them up. The right person for the right book.”
A xo