BLACK RABBIT HALL.

After yesterday's review of August's readers group book, today I'm bringing you September's read which the group will be discussing tomorrow ...

BLACK RABBIT HALL by EVE CHASE.

BACK COVER BLURB: The four Alton children spend every blissful summer at their family's Cornish home, a house nicknamed Black Rabbit Hall, playing on its sun-baked lawns, building dens in its woods. Endless days without an adult in sight. Amber, the eldest daughter, cannot imagine anything ever changing.

But no one foresees the storm that will bring it all to a tragic end, turning Black Rabbit Hall into a twisted, unforgiving place that will steal their childhood innocence. A home that not all of the Altons will be strong enough to survive.

Decades later, as Lorna winds her way through the countryside in search of a wedding venue, she discovers a disturbing message from one of the Alton children carved into a tree.

Will the truth of that dark summer finally creep into the light? Or should some secrets be buried forever?

FIRST SENTENCE {Prologue: Amber, last day of the summer holidays, 1969, Cornwall}: I feel safe on the cliff edge, safer than in the house anyway.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page  183}: Lorna's heart sinks. Just when she felt she was getting somewhere. Still, to be fair, Mrs Alton looks quite drained beneath the powdery blooms of blush on her cheeks, giving her the eerie appearance of an aged china doll.

SOURCE: A Reading Group read.

MY THOUGHTS: Let me begin by saying that this is a work of fiction and as such a certain amount of poetic licence is to be expected but there were certain things so implausible as to greatly mar my enjoyment of this book. The main one being ...

The threadbare rugs, the dark dank rooms, the peeling wallpaper, the dead seagull blocking the chimney, the hydrangea growing through the ballroom floor - all wonderfully descriptive of an ancestral hall long since past its prime but what bride-to-be would even consider holding her wedding here let alone show such determination to do so? 

Different eras (the late 1960's and 30 years on) and people. As if jumping around between the past and present, between the different occupants of Black Rabbit Hall, didn't make for potentially confusing reading. Add in the fact that many of the chapters ended in what amounted to cliff hangers and its hardly any wonder that I'd occasionally lose the thread of certain aspects of the story, finding myself having to back-track.

Perhaps surmountable concerns IF I'd otherwise found myself gripped by the plot and/or engaged with the characters but as it was, a case of too little too late, it wasn't until around page 150 or so and the hint of a tragedy that my interest was momentarily aroused and some pages after that that I found myself vaguely interested in how the story might eventually pan out.