I really didn't like this book. I won it some time ago and am only reviewing it now because I have started to read it many times and just couldn't get into it. I still haven't finished it and have decided to spend no more tim eon it.

It is the story Maddy, a successful career woman, her adopted grown daughter and her lover Nick, a successful book editor who is at a crossroads in his career and maybe in his personal life, and a gothic house/estate at the center of their shared history. I tried to care about these characters and their history,and I did a little but there never seemed to be any real plot to hold my attention.They move about not really doing anything.Perhaps if I read just a little farther osmething interesting would happen but after 200 pages I gave up. This book was not for me...but that's just me. Others might love it. ( )

From the very first page of Conscience Point, it's obvious that Madeleine Shaye is writing her story, but to whom is uncertain. It's not a chronological account of her life; rather, it's a twisted tale of messed up relationships and secrets. At the center is Conscience Point, a crumbling mansion with Gothic undertones in rural New York, the estate of the eccentric Ashcroft family: Serena, a matriarch obsessed with her birds; Violet, a hippie-like, free-spirited and mentally unstable artist with a drug and alcohol addiction; and Nick, a handsome charmer with commitment problems.

As I read, I couldn’t decide whether I liked the book enough to keep going, and I changed my mind every 10 pages or so. It would shift from difficult to follow, to interesting, to scratching my head, to interesting. If it hadn’t been for my desire to learn more about the odd but endearing Violet, I may not have finished the book. Overall, though, I’m glad I read the book, as the twists and turns and uncovered secrets were interesting enough and made the story more understandable. Still, I felt like Abeel was trying to make a point about artists and old money that I just didn’t get — maybe because I have zero in common with these characters?

Full review on Diary of an Eccentric. ( )

Madeleine “Maddy” Shaye, an accomplished concert pianist and television personality, lives a content life with her adopted daughter and her longtime boyfriend, Nick Ashcroft. As you might expect, Maddy’s perfect life begins to slowly unravel bit by bit, first her career and then her family. Abeel maintains a high level of suspense as the story progresses, skipping from Maddy’s past to the present and back again.

Abeel’s prose is similarly nimble, though its studied flippancy takes some getting used to. This passage describing Maddy’s culinary failure and Nick’s save is typical of Abeel’s style throughout:
"He cooked—partly by necessity. She'd curdled the beef Stroganoff for a dinner party, but Nick just laughed it off; their unspoken compact was never blame the other; the word "Strogo" became their code for gastric alert. Sure, he was bossy as hell in the kitchen, and as for the cleanup ... But ta-da! he'd set out steaming bowls of zuppa di pesce, exuding essence of sea."

Abeel’s upbeat, casual prose seems inconsistent with Conscience Point’s overriding darkness. It’s this darkness—a kind of pervasive Gothic atmosphere—that is this novel’s most compelling feature. Other redeeming qualities include Abeel’s graceful treatment of Maddy’s musical career and the supporting character of Violet, Nick’s sister. Although Violet rarely appears in the novel, her force is apparent throughout. Overall, Conscience Point is a suspenseful family drama written in somewhat distracting prose.

This review also appears on my blog Literary License. ( )

This novel could easily have been named layers of the heart. In the beginning you are looking at the outer layer of a relationship between a gifted, dedicated musician and the spoiled son from an old money family. As the layers are peeled back, you find the musicians best friend is her spouses sister but she's curiously out of the picture. Looking deeper, you begin to sense the lack of a moral compass from the man and the whole thing starts to unravel in a cascade of heart twisting events.
Music becomes the life raft that carry's our lady of the hour through the struggle that reveals the core of her being , and his.
The author showed marvelouis insight into the mind of a musicican and of course, the other player,player.Definition: never knew the meaning of the struggle for security or survival, filled that space with personality and trained charm.
And that was just the first few chapters, after that, there was no stopping until the whole thing played out, in four part harmony. It reminded me that music will get you times of no love, better than love will get through times of no music. ( )

I tried but couldn't get past the first few chapters. It's not often I put a book down, but this was one of them. ( )