Recent Reads {The Changeling}

The Changeling by Philippa Carr - I must say I like the cover art on the edition I have much better than the one above, but anyway... I had been reading through Carr's "Daughters of England" series again and left off quite awhile ago. (And I haven't bothered writing about them as I read them either - the last one I mentioned on the blog was #3 in the series, and this is #15! oops.) I picked up where I left off and just finished this one, which is set during Victorian England. (The series follows a family tree from mother to daughter, beginning in the time of Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn. Each is a romance novel in a rather gothic style - high drama and adventure, with dark secrets and hints of the supernatural.) Young Rebecca Mandeville is not at all happy when her widowed mother married Benedict Lansdon, and resents many of the changes it brings to her life. Worst of all, her mother dies in childbirth, and Rebecca helps to mother her young sister, Belinda. Their relationship with Benedict is distant at best. Rebecca brings another child into the family circle when a tragedy at a party leaves Lucie an orphan. Just because of the title, the reader clues into the possibility that Belinda may just be a changeling early in the story, but the clues don't fall into place for the characters right until the end. In the meantime, Rebecca and Benedict begin to develop a friendship amid the other tragedies and mysteries that surround them and their loved ones. Of course it all comes right in the end, although it's amazing to me how placidly they all seem to accept the startling revelation about the changeling at the end.

By the same author: The Witch From the Sea; The Lion Triumphant; The Miracle at St Bruno's.

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