An enjoyable novel by a great author, at times very dark but happy outcomes were arrived at. ( )

Not my cup of tea. The research is impeccable, but the book's age is showing. Fat-shaming. An innocently beautiful heroine. Blah, blah, blah. At least the movie had Vincent Price.

I’m guessing this will be my last Anya Seton novel. I keep expecting to find another [b:Katherine|33609|Katherine|Anya Seton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1436406825l/33609._SY75_.jpg|2372397], but the three others of her novels I have read have not lived up to that expectation. I have enjoyed reading her, but, for the most part, I think she is the kind of writer I would have loved for escapism when I was in my teens or twenties. I think I have simply outgrown her.

Our story opens in 1854 with Miranda Wells, a farm girl, receiving an invitation from her mother’s wealthy cousin to come to the estate of Dragonwyck to be a sort of governess to his child. Miranda is transported from her simple, work-a-day life to glamour, luxury and the charms of a cousin that she could little have imagined existing. Where the plot goes from here is fairly predictable. At no juncture did I feel there was really any mystery to unravel or any surprise plot twist, and Miranda behaved just as you would expect a gothic heroine to do, she fell for the charm and missed the obvious clues that all was not well at Dragonwyck.

What I do love about Seton is her ability to describe her settings and re-create a time period to perfection. I could picture upstate New York in the 1850s, and the historical research that was needed to make the story true to its time. As a bit of interest, Seton includes Edgar Allen Poe as one of her characters, and I can attest that the vignette that includes him is very accurate, knowing a bit about his life myself.

If you enjoy gothic romances, you might want to give Anya Seton a try.


( )

I liked this book enough to finish it but not more. The descriptions of the setting were evocative and enjoyable. The sketches of the minor characters were witty and perceptive, though the frequent jumps in point-of-view that sketched these characters were off-putting. Unfortunately, the major characters and relationships fell flat for me. The only character I liked at any point was Nicholas, and as his character deteriorated, no one else filled his place. Even at the end, when he was fully the villain, I still cared more about him than about the sketchily drawn hero and heroine whose only good traits were the wholesomeness, rejection of materialism, and willingness to work that were supposed to win my loyalty simply because I was told of them. Miranda's entire character arc was to move from dreamy hopefulness to pragmatic usefulness, and that message is too simplistic and moralistic for me to enjoy it. Miranda's obsessive fascination with Nicholas is the only convincing relationship in the book. His interest in her, her friendship with her maid, and her eventual relationship with Jeff are unconvincing. The setting, the premise, and Nicholas had great potential that kept me reading, but the book didn't live up to its potential. ( )

A fairly weak entry in the Seton collection. Miranda is really the only fully formed character as the story is mostly told from her point of view. She comes as poor cousin to the manor house of Dragonwyck, an estate on the Hudson, remnant of the wealthy Dutch feudal they tried to create in the USA. Nicholas van Ryn is the patroon and a thoroughly creepy one. It soon becomes clear he has no moral code except his own dominance but that is where the novel really falls apart. We really only see him through Miranda, who is utterly smitten. Besides a few sentences, he never really gets a full character, he is mostly a classic villian. I saw the plot coming a mile away and the heavy foreshadowing didn't do much to help that. I think I appreciate her later novels a bit more now.