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hannahjsimpson's review against another edition
4.0
**I received aneGalley of this title from NetGalley. Thank you to Ballantine Books and Random House Publishers for my advanced copy.**
When her uncle falls terminally ill, Hannah Larson brings her son to Cambridge to care for him for the summer. Her uncle, Christopher, lives in an apartment in a large country estate called Ashton Hall. Part of the old house is now apartments and part of the house is a museum relating to the history of the estate and its former family (the Creshams who died out in WWI.) It turns out parts of the house were totally unexplored and Hannah's son Nicky discovers a section of the house from the 1500s and human remains in one of the rooms. Over this summer of self-discovery, Hannah learns who she is as a mother, a wife, and a scholar, all as she searches for the identity of the woman who died in Ashton Hall.
I tore through this book in a day. I really appreciated that this book was told in only one timeline. I often read historical fiction books that flash between the past and present. You really got the historical aspect through the research Hannah helped conduct. It was definitely a different take on weaving a historical plot line with a modern one. I was also interested and hugely invested in how Hannah and Micky's future would play out. His autism and Tourette's plus violent outbursts often had my heart racing and breaking at the same time. All the characters are well crafted and leave you surprised at time.
I'd recommend this to readers of Kate Morten and Jojo Moyes.
When her uncle falls terminally ill, Hannah Larson brings her son to Cambridge to care for him for the summer. Her uncle, Christopher, lives in an apartment in a large country estate called Ashton Hall. Part of the old house is now apartments and part of the house is a museum relating to the history of the estate and its former family (the Creshams who died out in WWI.) It turns out parts of the house were totally unexplored and Hannah's son Nicky discovers a section of the house from the 1500s and human remains in one of the rooms. Over this summer of self-discovery, Hannah learns who she is as a mother, a wife, and a scholar, all as she searches for the identity of the woman who died in Ashton Hall.
I tore through this book in a day. I really appreciated that this book was told in only one timeline. I often read historical fiction books that flash between the past and present. You really got the historical aspect through the research Hannah helped conduct. It was definitely a different take on weaving a historical plot line with a modern one. I was also interested and hugely invested in how Hannah and Micky's future would play out. His autism and Tourette's plus violent outbursts often had my heart racing and breaking at the same time. All the characters are well crafted and leave you surprised at time.
I'd recommend this to readers of Kate Morten and Jojo Moyes.
sonya3312's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
kwough's review against another edition
3.0
Don't expect to have your City of Light experience with this book. Here are my takeaways:
-Historical stuff, enjoyed it! I learned what an anchoress was. Damn.
-Libraries and archives - if you were a kid like me who fantasized about being left overnight in your town's public library and having a whole night to read and research, you'll love the archive scenes.
-Gaslighting husbands - Good lord, is Kevin an a-hole. And her reaction to his "suffering" is just unbelievable. Woman please.
-Challenging neurodivergent kids: okaaaay. Help exists, get some. And for goodness sake, let your kid's caretaker know about his behaviors. No matter how special and bright he is, it's just irresponsible to not say "and sometimes he punches people and stabs them with scissors."
-Elderly benevolent uncles in lavender marriages: I want one like Christopher.
-Dogs: Duncan is the best character in the book, especially near the end when he intercedes in one of the "incidents" and heroically defuses everything.
-Quirky and brash American friends who yell at cafe workers because the cafe sells out of chocolate croissants early in the day: Get your butt out of bed early if you want the good stuff from the market. And, main character, why in the world would you admire this behavior and chase her down to become her friend?
Still, read it! Sometimes yelling at characters is cathartic, and you'll get some good history while you're at it.
-Historical stuff, enjoyed it! I learned what an anchoress was. Damn.
-Libraries and archives - if you were a kid like me who fantasized about being left overnight in your town's public library and having a whole night to read and research, you'll love the archive scenes.
-Gaslighting husbands - Good lord, is Kevin an a-hole. And her reaction to his "suffering" is just unbelievable. Woman please.
-Challenging neurodivergent kids: okaaaay. Help exists, get some. And for goodness sake, let your kid's caretaker know about his behaviors. No matter how special and bright he is, it's just irresponsible to not say "and sometimes he punches people and stabs them with scissors."
-Elderly benevolent uncles in lavender marriages: I want one like Christopher.
-Dogs: Duncan is the best character in the book, especially near the end when he intercedes in one of the "incidents" and heroically defuses everything.
-Quirky and brash American friends who yell at cafe workers because the cafe sells out of chocolate croissants early in the day: Get your butt out of bed early if you want the good stuff from the market. And, main character, why in the world would you admire this behavior and chase her down to become her friend?
Still, read it! Sometimes yelling at characters is cathartic, and you'll get some good history while you're at it.
tinitalorene's review against another edition
5.0
What an amazing story! I enjoyed reading a story with such a relatable main character. All the characters were very well done and seemed to jump off the page. I love the author’s choice to not gloss over the gross and ugly things. These were sometimes the most fascinating things to learn! I also enjoyed the way the author approached the subject of religion in this story. I managed to learn something new about my own faith’s history! I really appreciated the author’s choice to explore history, but set the story in the present. I feel that it really helped to make the story more relatable.
catladyreads26's review against another edition
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
thatsoneforthebooks's review against another edition
4.0
✨ Review ✨ Ashton Hall by Lauren Belfer
Hannah and her neurodiverse son Nicky arrive at Ashton Hall to spend time with her uncle Christopher, whose health is in decline. Nicky finds a hidden skeleton in Ashton Hall (which now is both historic site and has several small apartments for people like Christopher to live on site), and sets an investigation in motion about who this woman was and why she died bricked into a room in a hidden wing of the house.
Throughout the book, Hannah, Nicky, and a supporting cast of characters explore a treasure trove of sources to try to solve this mystery. Bringing in financial ledgers, library registers, commonplace books, and other ephemera from Ashton Hall, Belfer takes on a journey in understanding religious conflict, domestic life, and familiar norms in Tudor England.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: historical mystery told in contemporary times
Location: around Cambridge, UK
Pub Date: Out now!
As a historian, I love how this showcased fictional historical sources in the book. While everything came together perhaps a bit too neatly, I loved what this showed about the historical process and about how preconceived notions shape what and how we research. The pacing of this book is a little long and drawn out, but I loved it for that. I really enjoyed this book and the mystery and exploration it took me on!
Read this if you like:
⭕️ historic library registers -- what would people in and around a big property have been reading in Tudor times?
⭕️ French drains and other fascinating historical tidbits
⭕️ mysteries where primary source research saves the day
⭕️ old British houses
⭕️ neurodiverse characters
Thanks to @LaurenBelfer1 and Suzy Approved Book Tours for a copy of this book!
Hannah and her neurodiverse son Nicky arrive at Ashton Hall to spend time with her uncle Christopher, whose health is in decline. Nicky finds a hidden skeleton in Ashton Hall (which now is both historic site and has several small apartments for people like Christopher to live on site), and sets an investigation in motion about who this woman was and why she died bricked into a room in a hidden wing of the house.
Throughout the book, Hannah, Nicky, and a supporting cast of characters explore a treasure trove of sources to try to solve this mystery. Bringing in financial ledgers, library registers, commonplace books, and other ephemera from Ashton Hall, Belfer takes on a journey in understanding religious conflict, domestic life, and familiar norms in Tudor England.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: historical mystery told in contemporary times
Location: around Cambridge, UK
Pub Date: Out now!
As a historian, I love how this showcased fictional historical sources in the book. While everything came together perhaps a bit too neatly, I loved what this showed about the historical process and about how preconceived notions shape what and how we research. The pacing of this book is a little long and drawn out, but I loved it for that. I really enjoyed this book and the mystery and exploration it took me on!
Read this if you like:
⭕️ historic library registers -- what would people in and around a big property have been reading in Tudor times?
⭕️ French drains and other fascinating historical tidbits
⭕️ mysteries where primary source research saves the day
⭕️ old British houses
⭕️ neurodiverse characters
Thanks to @LaurenBelfer1 and Suzy Approved Book Tours for a copy of this book!
tsenko2's review against another edition
3.0
I chose to read this because Alka Joshi (The Henna Artist) mentioned during one of her author talks that it was the book she had most recently read.
I wasn’t very impressed. I felt like there was far too much going on for a narrative of one woman’s summer. She’s an American visiting England to be with a relative (who may or may not be her birth father) for his last days before dying of cancer. She learns her husband is bisexual and has been involved in a long term affair with a man she thought was a good friend. She has a 9 year old neurodivergent son who has violent episodes which have the potential for serious harm to himself and others. She has a one night stand. Her son finds a skeleton bricked up in a hidden room in the house they’re staying in. Plus, lets add a little more drama to her backstory by having her be fatherless (her mother wanted a child but not a husband) and having her Jewish grandparents shot by Nazis.
So she’s coping with Christopher dying, her husband’s betrayal, the difficulty of raising her son, a financial crisis if she chooses divorce, fear of her son after he injures her twice, guilt that she doesn’t always know what to do for her son, guilt over whether she needs to warn others about her son, guilt over her affair, a part time job, finishing off her PhD dissertation, and a compulsion to learn more about the woman whose skeleton was found. She researches the history of plague & religious conflicts in Tudor England as well as household records for that period and much of this is shared with the reader.
I think there was too much breadth and not enough depth. I never really empathized with or came to care about Hannah, the main character, because she just kept rocketing from crisis to crisis. I was far more interested in the life of Isabella, the skeleton.
I liked the setting (classic Gothic) and I liked the historical details. I would have preferred a dual timeline approach with a simplified story for Hannah and more about Isabella.
I wasn’t very impressed. I felt like there was far too much going on for a narrative of one woman’s summer. She’s an American visiting England to be with a relative (who may or may not be her birth father) for his last days before dying of cancer. She learns her husband is bisexual and has been involved in a long term affair with a man she thought was a good friend. She has a 9 year old neurodivergent son who has violent episodes which have the potential for serious harm to himself and others. She has a one night stand. Her son finds a skeleton bricked up in a hidden room in the house they’re staying in. Plus, lets add a little more drama to her backstory by having her be fatherless (her mother wanted a child but not a husband) and having her Jewish grandparents shot by Nazis.
So she’s coping with Christopher dying, her husband’s betrayal, the difficulty of raising her son, a financial crisis if she chooses divorce, fear of her son after he injures her twice, guilt that she doesn’t always know what to do for her son, guilt over whether she needs to warn others about her son, guilt over her affair, a part time job, finishing off her PhD dissertation, and a compulsion to learn more about the woman whose skeleton was found. She researches the history of plague & religious conflicts in Tudor England as well as household records for that period and much of this is shared with the reader.
I think there was too much breadth and not enough depth. I never really empathized with or came to care about Hannah, the main character, because she just kept rocketing from crisis to crisis. I was far more interested in the life of Isabella, the skeleton.
I liked the setting (classic Gothic) and I liked the historical details. I would have preferred a dual timeline approach with a simplified story for Hannah and more about Isabella.