Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of As Shadows Haunting

As Shadows Haunting
As Shadows Haunting
Author: Dinah Lampitt
Genre: Romance
Book Type: Paperback
reviewed on + 3389 more book reviews


This is one terrific book, not exactly romance, but most definitely historical, about Sarah Lennox and her romance with the young George III, mostly while he was still just prince. It's not a quick read (425 pages) but well worth the effort. Although there are love stories in the book, it is not a romance as that term is used in today's book categorization. (Indeed, the spine says simply FICTION.) The emphasis is instead more on overall story and history - which is very well researched. Sarah Lennox was a woman well before her time, who suffered greatly because of who she was; not good enough for a King, but too good for a commoner, according to her family.
In the book, Sidonie Brooks, a divorced, modern-day female musician specializing in harpsichords and other older instruments, moves into a flat on the street that backs up to where Holland House once was.

She acquires a harpsichord - a gift from George III to Sarah - without knowing any of the history of it! or them, until she falls through a time fault. These journeys take four hours of today's time, but show her only minutes of the then time, and the trips move the past forward in an non-proportionate way. The first is when Sarah is barely fourteen, and they end when she is an elderly lady, whereas the contemporary story occupies only a bit more than a year of today's time. These trips may happen anytime and anywhere - providing Sarah was, at least once in her own lifetime, in the same place the musician is, in today's world.

The two stories are set against each other; Sarah and her loves in the mid 1700s, and Sidonie battling her pompous ex-husband while enjoying her burgeoning career and the travels it brings, plus the new men in her life.