I thought Parson's House was utter tripe. Not only does the plot feature ghosts, always a mistake in my opinion, but for a book published in 1977 it is almost an anti-feminist manifesto. I'm happy to ignore the restricted roles of women in books of the thirties and earlier because they reflect their times, but in this book, at least, Cadell comes across to me as a woman-denigrating dinosaur. ( )

142/2020. Another competently written romance novel from Cadell, although not one of her better efforts because the plot is perfunctory with minimal relevance to the protagonists except as background and even the main cast characterisations aren't as filled-out as this author usually manages. Which won't satisfy many persistent Cadell readers who tend to read her novels for the entertaining side characters and situations as much or more than the central romance. The inevitable non-identikit elements here include a focus on ties to family-of-choice rather than disappointing blood families, the fact this is technically a ghost genre novel, and the presence of a British-Ugandan-Asian family as walk-ons. ( )