Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

I'm finding it rather amusing that I decide to take a break from all of the Irish books .... just in time for a meme that falls on St. Patrick's Day. Then again, I did always wear orange to school on March 17th so maybe it's just that my Northern Irish Protestant ancestors wiggled into my subconscious to get me to shun the day. Or maybe I just wasn't thinking about anything besides wanting to read one of my new acquisitions ....

Eve Chase's Black Rabbit Hall was pretty much a cover-buy one day on Amazon. It was one of the "people who bought _____ also bought _____" recommendations and, so far, those people seem pretty brilliant. I almost passed on it because I kept seeing comparisons to Daphne du Maurier and, quite frankly, she always kind of freaked me out .... but then I realized that it's probably been at least 25 years since I last attempted du Maurier and I've probably matured a little since then in my reading tastes.

I'm not very far into it but hope to knock it off this weekend curled up in my pajamas with a steady flow of tea by my side. So far it definitely appears to be the type of book that will be hard to put down once I can get as distraction-free as possible! I'm loving how it alternates between Amber's story beginning in 1968 and Lorna's story 30 years later.

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Amazon Description

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Amber Alton knows that the hours pass differently at Black Rabbit Hall, her London family’s country estate, where no two clocks read the same. Summers there are perfect, timeless. Not much ever happens. Until, of course, it does. 
More than three decades later, Lorna is determined to be married within the grand, ivy-covered walls of Pencraw Hall, known as Black Rabbit Hall among the locals. But as she’s drawn deeper into the overgrown grounds, half-buried memories of her mother begin to surface and Lorna soon finds herself ensnared within the manor’s labyrinthine history, overcome with an insatiable need for answers about her own past and that of the once-happy family whose memory still haunts the estate.
Stunning and atmospheric, this debut novel is a thrilling spiral into the hearts of two women separated by decades but inescapably linked by the dark and tangled secrets of Black Rabbit Hall. 

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Friday 56 (today is page 256 from the hardcover) is hosted at Freda's Voice 

& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader.


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Ramble -- Reposted from Goodreads
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4 out of 5 stars

I'm having a hard time classifying this book in my head. It's not really any one thing. Not a mystery -- although there are mysteries uncovered. It's not a romance -- although there are romances. It's ... just a book that I bought thanks to Amazon saying "people who bought ____ also bought Black Rabbit Hall" and me going "ooooh pretty cover!" And I'm glad Amazon told me and I'm glad there was a hardcover in the Marketplace for ridiculously little $ and I'm super glad that I read it even though I'm not quite sure what I actually read. I DO know that once I started I had an incredibly hard time putting it down and only did so for food, sleep, work and the 76ers. (The missing star is because I was able to put it down while basketball was on without flipping out mentally over not reading. 5* books I'll read and then half pay attention to the game in question.)