Review: The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice

*Thanks to Bookbridgr for my beautiful signed edition of this book!*

Penelope longs to be grown-up and to fall in love; but various rather inconvenient things keep getting in her way. Like her mother, a stunning but petulant beauty widowed at a tragically early age, her younger brother Inigo, currently incapable of concentrating on anything that isn't Elvis Presley, a vast but crumbling ancestral home, a severe shortage of cash, and her best friend Charlotte's sardonic cousin Harry...

Oh I just adored this book! There's no emotional rollercoaster, no shocking plot twists, simply an enchanting coming of age story that in every way deserves the title of 'modern vintage classic'. It is truly captivating, beautifully written, and I became so attached to the characters that I was loathed to leave them at the end. I'm told that there are echoes of Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle here, which I have to admit I've never read, but if it's anything like this then I fully intend to! To call this novel 'nice' or 'charming' would be to patronise it, for although these are fitting adjectives it is so much more than that. Eva Rice draws the reader completely into the world of Penelope Wallace, her beautifully eccentric mother, her crumbling ancestral home of Milton Magna which is a character in itself, the heady romance of her teenage crush on Johnnie Ray, and her first experience of love. An all time favourite already!



Comments

  1. Girl with her Head in a Book12 August 2015 at 12:26

    Oh, I loved this book too! I agree that there are similarities in tone between this and I Capture the Castle but I think that Penelope is just such a lovely narrator. Hope you're having a lovely week! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Vicki W14 August 2015 at 15:04

      She's a wonderful narrator, I can't believe I haven't read it until now! Thanks for stopping by :)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Feature and Follow Friday: Featured Blogger!

Image
Feature and Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read . And guess what... I was lucky enough to be chosen to feature this week! So welcome one and welcome all, take a look around! This week's question: post a photo of your favourite coffee mug. I haven't really got many mugs that mean much to me, but my mum got me this one for my twenty first birthday. It sits by my bed so it's the one that I always use when I'm reading. The poem on the side reads " A mug to keep for years to come, to remind me of when I was Twenty One ." So cute! Interview Questions: When did you start blogging? I started blogging last December. I graduated from university with an English Lit and History degree last summer, and after leaving I found it odd no longer writing about the books that I was reading. I found myself keeping notes, which gradually turned into reviews, and the idea of starting a book blog just popped into my head one day. Little did I know ...
Read more

Top Ten "Gateway" Books/Authors In My Reading Journey

Image
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by  The Broke and the Bookish . This week the theme is Top Ten Gateway Books. I really loved this topic as it made me look back over my relationship with reading, from learning to read to studying English Literature at university. Reading has always been an important part of my life, and on reflection there are a number of books that mark turning points in my reading journey.  1) Roger Red Hat - Sheila K. McCullagh The first point in any reader's journey is learning to read at school. I learnt with what Google tells me were called the One Two Three and Away collection of reading books, but I've always known them as Roger Red Hat, Billy Blue Hat, Jennifer Yellow Hat etc.  I remember around ten years ago a friend whose mum used to be a teacher found the books in her attic and we re-read them all in an afternoon. 2) The Tale of Mrs Tiggywinkle - Beatrix Potter A childhood staple. Family visits to the Lake District, The World of Beatrix...
Read more

Review: Victoria by Daisy Goodwin

Image
I've always been very interested in the life of Queen Victoria. It's hard not to be when you're named after her! So it was with some delight that I discovered ITV were making a television series all about her early years, penned by the wonderful Daisy Goodwin. Despite my initial frustration to discover that the majority of the series was filmed within an hour's drive of my house and I knew nothing of it, I was glued to my screen every night for the eight week duration (Captain Poldark had to wait for iPlayer). So when I heard that Daisy had written a novel to accompany the series, complete with extra scenes, well I headed straight online to pre-order it. The cover is beautiful and perfectly fitting, and I dived right in as soon as it arrived. "In June 1837, the eighteen-year-old Victoria wakes up to find that she is Queen of the most powerful nation in the world. But will she be queen in her own right, or a puppet controlled by her mother and the sinister Sir John ...
Read more