Helen Halstead

The heroine meets a very amiable man while she is out walking by the pier.They chat for a while then parts,and the heroine goes back to the cottage she is renting with her crippled brother who recently returned from the war and her vain and fashionable sister.

She tries to find out the mans adress...but...

It turns out no one knows of him or have seen him.Of course she wants to find out the truth of it so she enlists her brother in helping to inquire in the whereabouts of the man.


Her brother and sister thinks she is going insane because she keeps persisting in seeing this mysterious man.

Soon even the heroine begins to think she might have imagined this gentleman.Conjured up a suitable suitor to avoid dealing with her reality as a spinster without too many prospects.

At times I started to suspect the heroine was one of those unreliable narrators

And even that she had actually gone mad.

The author has this way of writing that makes one uneasy at times and she offsets this beautifully by showing the mundane side of life in the regency era.It heightens the suspense when others also begin to see the heroine as a little bit odd.

A suspenseful read. I wouldnt call it a gothic precisely but it has shades of it. I would recommend reading it through to the end to find out the truth.… (meer)

There is a very good reason why fairy tales end with "and they lived happily ever after" - ever after is boring! This was too much like pulp Regency romances I've read during fits of boredom - where the smart, vivacious heroine tries to gain acceptance with "The Ton". (If you like these, Julie Garwood's are the best in my opinion.) I had to force myself to finish, then found out what I should have done is read the epilogue - it satisfies all your curiosity about the author's interpretation of what happened to the Bennett sisters.… (meer)