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Publisher’s Summary

In post–World War I England, a young woman inherits a mysterious library and must untangle its powerful secrets…

With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War, she warily makes her way to her new home.

The abbey is foreboding, the servants reserved and suspicious. But there is a treasure waiting behind locked doors: a magnificent library. Despite cryptic warnings from the staff, Ivy feels irresistibly drawn to its dusty shelves, where familiar works mingle with strange, esoteric texts. And she senses something else in the library too, a presence that seems to have a will of its own.  

Rumors swirl in the village about the abbey’s previous owners, about ghosts and curses, and an enigmatic manuscript at the center of it all. And as events grow more sinister, it will be up to Ivy to uncover the library’s mysteries in order to reclaim her own story—before it vanishes forever.

What I Loved

This book was a fun read. It hit plenty of the classic Gothic touchstones like a plucky, out of place heroine, a crumbling estate, long-serving staff with secrets, superstitious locals, and a brooding love interest. The atmosphere and setting were the best pieces of the novel for me. Plenty of Gothic elements set up a a perfectly spooky concept.

The setting of a malevolent library was a unique twist, but I did find myself hoping for something unexpected to happen and it never really did. The plot was formulaic, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in genre fiction, but there were enough unique elements to hold my interest. I’d consider this a pretty cozy Gothic story, a good read on a rainy night.

What I Didn’t

Without giving away spoilers, there was an element of the mystery that was so intriguing and unique, but really fell flat at the end and I didn’t feel like we got a good enough answer. It felt like it was right there, but didn’t quite translate. A dual timeline that explored the origins of the book more thoroughly would have really punched it up a notch for me. The characters were somewhat flat and not particularly complex enough to feel like real people. I get that a lot of this kind of genre fiction has tropes that readers are expecting, but I didn’t feel like this one quite made the tropes interesting enough to pop off the page.

Favorite Line

Heaven truly was an untouched stash of books, just waiting to be opened and read.

Hester Fox, The Last Heir of Blackwood Library

Last Words

This is a cozy Gothic novel that, while hitting many of the elements I love, didn’t quite come together into a great whole. It was a good read for a rainy spring night, but probably won’t get a reread from me.