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2 out of 5 stars
By
Stephanie
on
09-17-12
Not what I expected
Would you try another book from Elizabeth Wilhide and/or Carole Boyd?
Yes, Carole Boyd
No, Elizabeth Wilhide -- or at least not without much more research on how others liked her book
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
This was not what I expected at all. I enjoy sweeping epics that are based around a building. I'm a huge Kate Morton fan and love how her stories center on a house or an estate and tell the story going back and forth in time. That was what I was looking for. What I got instead was a story about a house and each little story that was told felt disjointed and unconnected. The author kept saying at the end, "The house knows. The house knows what it wants." Apparently it wanted a lot of inhabitants that were fairly boring and only wanted their stories half-told. It seemed that each time I became half-way interested in a few characters, the author jumped to another era. Arghhh... and barely any stories were connected! I did enjoy at the end when Allison and Izzy and Charlie and Reggie all seemed to float in and out of the stories.
I listened all the way through, I kept hoping it would get interesting and I could have given up on the story, but I'm too cheap. I paid for it dammit, and I was going to listen to it.
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1 of 1 people found this review helpful
3 out of 5 stars
By
Debra
on
05-14-13
Good, but not great.
Any additional comments?
When Charlie and his sister inherit their aunt's run-down estate in rural England, Ashenden Park, they disagree over what they should do with it. Charlie, who now resides in New York City, knows they can't afford to keep such an enormous estate and his sister Ros wants to keep it and live there. As they are contemplating the decisions they need to make, the reader is transported back to different periods in the history of Ashenden Park, from it's design and contruction, to a later owner who had the money to make it a great estate, to its becoming a hospital for soldiers during WWI and on to Charlie's aunt purchasing the estate and restoring it in the 1950s. The book was reviewed as Downton Abbey-ish, but I did not feel that it was. It was a good book, but not a great one. Recommended, with that caveat.
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Customer Reviews
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2 out of 5 stars
By
Sally
on
09-22-12
Story of a house
This is much more about the building itself rather than a saga type of story about people. I expected something different more like a " Downton Abbey" scenario so did not really enjoy this. It is a random collection of stories about random people who have one thing in common namely Ashenden itself. The first two hours are taken up by the description of the building process ifself. Dull and uninteresting.
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1 of 1 people found this review helpful