By Blood Possessed

Pat Montella, living a dreary life as a single cubicle worker in New Jersey (or is it Pennsylvania? it's dreary, anyway), receives a mysterious invitation to an old house in Virginia which may someday be hers. She enjoys meeting the house's owner, an elderly lady who wants to leave the house and grounds to Pat in her will. Some of the neighbors are not so friendly, and developers are eager to get her to promise in advance to sell the land to them. And, Pat begins having some very strange feelings -- visions? hallucinations? -- as if she is back in Civil War days on this same land. The reasons for all this eventually become clear and there is a thrilling climax. This book reminded me of some of Barbara Michaels' work, which is high show more praise indeed. I'm glad there are more books in this series. Recommended for those who like history, genealogy, and, while it's not strictly time travel, it's good for time travel aficionados as well. show less

Like new with very minor shelf wear. Signed by author, "To Carolyn, Enjoy!" First edition pbk, 10th printing.

I actually went to HS with the author.

I really wanted to like the book since I knew the author, but I found it to be very slow. I really could have skipped the first 2/3 of the book and just read the last part and not have missed much. The last part of the book moved along but the beginning--ugh.No real red herrings. Just lots of characters. many had motives for not wanting Pat to inherit the land, but none were compelling. The characters were all pretty flat.

The reveals were pretty anticlimatic. Alo Miis Maggie seems to think that Pat will experience something (i.e., see ghosts) but we never find why she thinks so. This seems to show more come out of the blue and I found that annoying. Pat hasn't expressed any physic powers before in her life. There's really no setup for this and there should have been.

The Civil War stuff seems well researched but I don't know much about the Civil War, so this may or may not be true. I did enjoy reading the chapters that were about the family during the Civil War. I think I would have preferred to read a historcial novel by this author instead.

It wasn't chilling or scary enough to be a ghost story. There weren't enough mystery elements to be a true mystery. There wasn't enough history to be a historical novel. Frankly from the title, I thought this would be about vampires. show less

Pat Montella can inherit a Virginia estate if she spends the first week of May there, a period that coincides with a Civil War battle that Pat is able to "see."