Many of the characters from the first four books in Laura E. Richards' Margaret Series, as well as a few from her Hildegarde books, converge in this charming young adult novel from 1901, all gathering at Fernley House, the grand Long Island mansion that is the ancestral family home of the extended Montfort clan. Mourning the temporary loss of Basil and Susan D., the young cousins unofficially adopted by Margaret and her Uncle John in Margaret Montfort, the two residents of Fernley decide to enliven their summer by throwing a house party, and soon the far-flung Montforts and their friends begin to arrive. Hugh Montfort, Peggy's partially lame brother, makes his first appearance in the series, as does Peggy's younger sister Jean. Peggy herself, now a senior at Miss Russell's boarding school, soon arrives as well, and the Merryweather twins, Gerald and Phil, the former of whom befriended Margaret in the second of the series, are not long to follow. Some unexpected characters, from Grace Wolfe - AKA "The Goat" or "The Horned Owl" - a chum from Peggy's freshman year at school who is taken on as a companion to Fernley neighbor Mrs. Peyton, to Rita DelMonte (nee Montfort) and her new husband Captain Jack, come all the way from Cuba as a birthday surprise for Uncle John, also make an appearance. The result is a tale that reads, for fans of the series, like a happy reunion...

I enjoyed Fernley House immensely, and was happy to spend a little more time with some of the characters I have become so fond of, reading Richards' two interrelated series. Truthfully, I don't know that the story here was particularly strong - quite a lot of comings, goings, and comings again, with little in the way of a united/uniting plot - but it didn't bother me in the slightest. I would have liked the see the romance between Hugh and Grace more fully developed than it was, and would have preferred quite a bit more detail, in the tragic back story provided for Uncle John. The dramatic finale, in which Mrs. Peyton's house is burned to the ground, and the selfish (non)invalid learns an important lesson, felt a little too moralistic (not to mention tacked on), and I would have preferred something more to do with Fernley itself. I also could have happily lived without the scene in which some of the characters make fun of the new Irish stable-boy, as it is a fairly ugly moment in an otherwise pleasant narrative. But leaving these criticisms aside, on the whole I took pleasure in the reading, and rather regret that the next installment of the series, The Merryweathers, will be the last I spend with these characters! ( )