Title: The Wildling Sisters
Author: Eve Chase
Edition: G.P. Putnam
and Sons, 2017
Setting: Britain,
1950s
Genre: Gothic, Dual
Timeline
Perhaps it’s
because I read "Rebecca" at an impressionable age, but a juicy,
well-written gothic novel set in a British country house? Sign me up!
The Wildling Sisters
is a dual timeline novel set in the lovely English countryside in an
old manor house called Applecote. In 1959, four sisters, Flora, Pam,
Margot, and Dot Wilde, are sent there by their flighty and glamorous
mother to spend the summer with their aunt and uncle. Of course,
there’s a snake in the lovely Eden of Applecote; their cousin
Audrey disappeared several years before, never to be seen again. The
sisters spend the stifflingly hot summer dealing with the emotional
wreckage of their aunt and uncle, flirting with two upper-class
neighbor boys, and coping with the rivalries that come with that.
In the present,
Jesse and her husband Will move into Applecote, along with Bella,
Will’s daughter from his first marriage, and Jesse and Will’s
baby daughter. Bella, filled with grief from her mother’s death
and general teenage angst, is not happy with the move.
This is a lush,
atmospheric novel with descriptive, suspenseful writing and memorable
characters. Secrets, jealousies, and mysteries abound. The
conclusion to both timelines is satisfying, although I felt that the
story of the four sisters was compelling enough to stand alone – in
these dual timeline novels, one always seems much more interesting,
and for me it was the sisters.
This is the second
book by Eve Chase that I’ve read and greatly enjoyed (Black Rabbit
Hall was the first). If you enjoy a good atmospheric, gothic novel
or books by Kate Morton, Rachel Hore, or Katherine Webb, this is
probably one to seek out.
