Emily Barr

Interesting( if a little bit confusing novel to begin with )surrounding a mysterious mansion in Cornwall called Cliff House. The novel opens with three local friends ( Ari, Josie and Clem) filming a Year 12 project at the house claiming its owned by horrible rich people, haunted and a zombie lady lives in the caretaker's cottage at the end of the driveway. They fly their drone over the house and lose it in the garden and then need to climb over the wall to retrieve it because they have said a whole lot of bad stuff about the owners of the house. While they are doing this, Ari decides to make peace with the lady who lives in the cottage and apologize for trespassing, but not before they find something weird in the garden beds.
Rewind back to WW2 and Martha is an evacuee coming to stay in Cornwall. We see her chosen by Violet to live in Cliff House. Fast forward to 2008 and we are suddenly looking at two mothers of new babies - one being rude to the other when her baby starts digging in the flower bed!
As you can see, the book jumps all over the place, and you the reader need to keep your wits about you as you tie each character together. The evacuee is the old lady in the cottage. The baby is Josie the best friend of Ari. It is all a bit complicated but eventually you start to see what is happening..

There are two deaths...one is a suicide and one a murder. There is a complicated friendship between Ari and Clem, the very rich, snobby great granddaughter of Martha who owns Cliff House. There is a beautiful friendship between Ari and Martha as they share a love of Cliff House itself and the ancient dresses she has kept. There is also romance between Ari and Rik despite a rocky start and LGBT romance between Ari's friend Josie and Rik's sister Meg. And finally, there is the reading of a will where Cliff House is left to who? (After the mystery of the flower beds has been sorted).… (altro)

When I started reading this book, I wasn't sure if it was something I was going to like or not. You see Flora, our narrator, had a brain tumor removed and it also removed her short term memory. Basically she forgets everything that has happened since she was 9 years old every time she turns around. She resorts to writing notes to herself on her hands and arms to fill herself in on things. So, the reason that this was hard for me to get into at first was because of the repetitiveness. Every time Flora forgets, she has to go back through EVERYTHING to understand why she's not a little girl anymore.

Then I got to this magical place where I got used to the recapping, and I started LOVING this book. Flora just grew on me and I was rooting for her while equally worrying to death what was going to happen to her. She basically kisses a boy on the beach and REMEMBERS IT-- and only it. She decides to follow that memory to the arctic where the boy currently is-- on her own. I was blown away by her bravery and ability to always land on her feet. I also wanted to fly to Svalbard and bring her home safely. I am a mother after all.

I thought the best part of this book (besides Flora in general) was that there was this whole other "family secrets" storyline, which made the book so much more interesting. I didn't really want to read about a GUY that "fixes" her-- and you guys, this book is not that!! It's about Flora finding her independence and being insanely brave and LIVING.

By the end of the book, I went from nervous and tense to emotional in a hurry. It surprised me how hard the ending hit me. I cried-- which I haven't been doing as much while reading. I felt the hurt and hope, and THAT was when I realized how good this book really was.

OVERALL: I loved the rollercoaster this book took me on. Flora isn't a character I'll be forgetting anytime soon. I completely recommend trying this-- it's like a YA Momento with major feels.

My Blog:

… (altro)

It’s been a long while since I read a book by Emily Barr, and this particular book has, according to my LibraryThing profile, been sitting on my shelf since 2007!! (At LEAST, since 2007 is when I made my LT profile in the first place).

Anyhow, I have been doing less reading lately, largely because I have discovered the joys of cross-stitching and have become slightly addicted. Nonetheless, I wanted to get back into reading and a good psychological thriller is usually a great way to get out of a reading slump. I mean, probably – this is the first time I’ve really been in a reading slump since I can remember.

So the plot – Susie, a successful artist, lives in France with her gorgeous boyfriend Roman. She has a great career, a beautiful house – and a BIG secret, which has haunted her since her schooldays. On an impulse she decides to host a reunion weekend with her old schoolfriends, Amanda, Izzy and Tamsin. None of them have seen each other since they left school and it becomes clear that it is because of the aforementioned secret which Susie, Amanda and Izzy share, and which is something to do with their shared guilt over an event years earlier involving Tamsin.

Typically the weekend doesn’t go as expected. It’s not long before tensions are running very high, relationships are fracturing and while Susie wants to come clean to Tamsin about the event that ruined Tamsin’s world years earlier, Amanda and Izzy think it’s a bad idea (although for different reasons; Amanda is being selfish while Izzy feels that no good can come from revealing the truth after all this time).

There is also a side plot about a man who has commissioned some paintings from Susie and his motives. To be honest, I’m not sure why this was in the book or what it added to the story other than some unnecessary padding.

Overall, I enjoyed the story and found it to be an undemanding read. There were two timelines – the present day, and the flashbacks to the four friends’ schooldays, which gradually led up to the secret at the heart of the story.

My favorite character was Izzy and I also liked Amanda’s long suffering husband Patrick. My least favorite character was, without doubt, Amanda. I think we were supposed to feel sorry for her as the burden of guilt she had carried for so many years had made her bitter and unpleasant. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to feel this, given that in the flashback chapters we also saw how Amanda was before the big event and she wasn’t very nice then either.

However, I have one issue with this book and that was the ending. Not that it was awful; it was just – abrupt. It seemed to end very quickly as though the author had run out of time and just wrote the last page in a hurry. I genuinely think there was need for at least another chapter or so to explore a few threads more deeply.

Overall though, an absorbing read, and one which pulled me out of my reading slump and made me look forward to starting another book.… (altro)