Helpful Score: 3
Talk about "Gothic Revival" -- this romance successfully revives some of the style, conventions and tropes of the Gothic romances that were popular about 30 years ago (think Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney). But there are a few twists to update it for current readers. It's got a first-person narrator (a governess, of course!) and it's set in 1873, and takes place largely within a forbidding turreted stone Victorian mansion, perched on a hill in San Francisco, with plenty of atmospheric fog around it. The house is nearly a character in itself. The master is dark, sexy and mysterious, and may have killed his wife, but all of the family members in the house seem to have their secrets. The sex scenes are a little more explicit than they used to be in such books, and there's more mental lusting after the master going on. This book worked pretty well for me, with a few issues: this is a new writer whose writing style often drops into cliches, and also, the two young boys whom the governess teaches are not believable. Like little adorable dolls, spouting wit & wisdom beyond their years at every turn. "I wuv you," one actually says (a slight speech impediment being such a cute thing in a child). Still, it was kind of fun to see the old Gothic romances revived and I was nearly cheering each time some old setpiece got trotted out (a fierce black stallion, a visit to a graveyard, books with mysterious inscriptions, a parrot who offers prophetic utterances, etc.)
