Scan barcode
A review by thebooktrail88
House of Shadows by Nicola Cornick
5.0
Booktrail your adventure to the house of Shadows here
This book is the perfect read to get engrossed in and to keep you there. With three time periods, three heroines and their love stories, and two objects defining their fate an their journey in life, I was hooked. I’ve always been chilled by history and wondered whose hands have touched the objects I see in museums, the people they’ve affected and how they came to be in our possession now. This book gives you some of those answers and as I passed seamlessly between one period and another, I realised I was holding my breath. God this was good and I spent a whole day immersed in it, not wanting to move and not wanting it to end. It’s so evocative and atmospheric that I wanted to be drinking red wine from a goblet, in a room with wooden paneling or out in the gardens of Ashdown House itself. This is a place which really fascinates the author and from which this story originates and I really need to go there now in order to sense the story and the footsteps of history in the present.
It sent chills up my spine in a good way to sense those who have gone before us and what legacy they leave on the present. I really hope Nicola writes more of this kind of story as if this is not a way to get people entranced by history, then I don’t know what is.
The photo here was taken by Nicola herself of the very house where she works and where the story is set. It's this house which is central to all three stories. This was the last place Ben was seen alive whilst he was in the process of researching the family tree. Lavinia Flyte also has strong links to the house and the ornate bejeweled mirror and the pearl soon resurface as the stories link together.
Two objects passed down by history and the mystical aura that these two objects have, having been in the hands of three very different women. The author is a guide at Ashdown house and a keen historian and this passion shows though in the evocative and rich detail of each time period and of the mystical Ashdown House itself.
Each time period is clearly defined by voice, dress, social mores and the beliefs that tie each women to the object of cursed beauty.
This book is the perfect read to get engrossed in and to keep you there. With three time periods, three heroines and their love stories, and two objects defining their fate an their journey in life, I was hooked. I’ve always been chilled by history and wondered whose hands have touched the objects I see in museums, the people they’ve affected and how they came to be in our possession now. This book gives you some of those answers and as I passed seamlessly between one period and another, I realised I was holding my breath. God this was good and I spent a whole day immersed in it, not wanting to move and not wanting it to end. It’s so evocative and atmospheric that I wanted to be drinking red wine from a goblet, in a room with wooden paneling or out in the gardens of Ashdown House itself. This is a place which really fascinates the author and from which this story originates and I really need to go there now in order to sense the story and the footsteps of history in the present.
It sent chills up my spine in a good way to sense those who have gone before us and what legacy they leave on the present. I really hope Nicola writes more of this kind of story as if this is not a way to get people entranced by history, then I don’t know what is.
The photo here was taken by Nicola herself of the very house where she works and where the story is set. It's this house which is central to all three stories. This was the last place Ben was seen alive whilst he was in the process of researching the family tree. Lavinia Flyte also has strong links to the house and the ornate bejeweled mirror and the pearl soon resurface as the stories link together.
Two objects passed down by history and the mystical aura that these two objects have, having been in the hands of three very different women. The author is a guide at Ashdown house and a keen historian and this passion shows though in the evocative and rich detail of each time period and of the mystical Ashdown House itself.
Each time period is clearly defined by voice, dress, social mores and the beliefs that tie each women to the object of cursed beauty.