Black Rabbit Hall
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4.2 • 65 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“For fans of Kate Morton and Daphne du Maurier, Black Rabbit Hall is an obvious must-read.”—Bookpage
A secret history. A long-ago summer. A house with an untold story.
Amber Alton knows that the hours pass differently at Black Rabbit Hall, her London family’s Cornish country house, where no two clocks read the same. Summers there are perfect, timeless. Not much ever happens. Until, one terrible day, it does.
More than three decades later, Lorna is determined to be married within the grand, ivy-covered walls of Pencraw Hall, known as Black Rabbit Hall among the locals. But as she’s drawn deeper into the overgrown grounds, she soon finds herself ensnared within the house’s labyrinthine history, overcome with a need for answers about her own past and that of the once-golden family whose memory still haunts the estate.
Eve Chase's debut novel is a thrilling spiral into the hearts of two women separated by decades but inescapably linked by the dark and tangled secrets of Black Rabbit Hall.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This leisurely paced modern British gothic is the debut novel from journalist Chase. Thirty-two-year-old schoolteacher Lorna and her fianc , Jon, a carpenter who works for his family construction business, are Londoners in Cornwall to inspect possible venues for their marriage celebration. One place fetching Lorna's eye is the estate Pencraw Hall, better known as Black Rabbit Hall, which has seen better days. Upon their arrival, Lorna feels a close kinship to the sprawling manor house, but Jon has serious reservations and wants to leave. Lorna chats with the current owner, Caroline Alton, an aristocrat who is nearly broke. The book has a second narrative that takes place three decades earlier, further engaging the reader. Hugo Alton lives with his wife, Nancy, and their four young children at the same estate. After Nancy dies in an equine accident, the bereft Hugo introduces his family to his old American friend Caroline Shawcross, a widow, and her son, Lucian. When Hugo and Caroline marry, Hugo's eldest daughter, Amber, falls in love with the older Lucian, and their taboo relationship causes a dark scandal that the Altons go to painful and cruel lengths to shield from the public eye. Lorna accepts Caroline's invitation to stay at the manor house and then gets busy putting together the pieces to discover her ties to the Altons and Black Rabbit Hall. Her expos of the family secrets paves the way to the upbeat resolution. Chase deserves high marks for her atmospheric setting and vivid prose, and fans of old-fashioned gothic stories will find this a winner.
Customer Reviews
Great read for Coronavirus times
I loved this wonderful tale of family, the massive old home and all the sweet and bitter of family lives. A well done story of family lives.
Great book. I loved it. A vintage recipe that is both savory and sweet.
This book was VERY good. It is slow going in the beginning, but Eve Chase writes with amazingly vivid imagery that will stick in my head forever. I felt every emotion possible throughout the book. What I found to be one of my favorite things though, was the way the Author truly helped the reader to FEEL what it is to grow up in a family with siblings you love, parents you adore. Although struck by unstoppable tragedy, wicked stepmothers, forced estrangement, and oceans of guilt, the relationships you form growing up in close knit family are ones you hold in your heart forever. That feeling of love between brothers and sisters, a mother and her children is the purest love there is in my opinion, and this book swept up into my soul and made me cry.
I listened to it on audiobook, I did not read it. It was not a fast listen, and I admit I had to rewind every so often if my listening comprehension skills tried to wander, but I think is somewhat normal. However drawn out it may have seemed, I disagree with a previous review. It WAS NOT boring, and held me to the very end. I needed to know the last bit on each of the fabulous and real life characters, and even when I felt satisfied with the ending, the Author gave me more with the epilogue.
It was vintage, savory, and sweet. I would recommend to anyone. Truly a story to be repeated. I know I will put it on my all time fave list, and think of it for quite some time.
Black Rabbit Hall
I loved this book and am so sad to leave it.