Simon Watson, a young librarian, lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home, a house perched on the edge of a cliff that is slowly crumbling into the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks.
One day, Simon receives a mysterious book from an antiquarian bookseller; it has been sent to him because it is inscribed with the name Verona Bonn, Simon's grandmother. Simon must unlock the mysteries of the book, and decode his family history, before fate deals its next deadly hand.
Review:
Fascinating, captivating, enchanting. I read the edition with the above image; my only complaint about the book is that this image bears no resemblance to the contents of the book. And without reading the synopsis before reading the book, you don't find out until the second page that the story is from a male main character's perspective. Given that I am a female and there is a female on the cover, I figured it would be a female narrator...I was wrong.
Okay, so based on the synopsis, you know that there is a mysterious book involved. So I can say that I love how the mysterious book moves forward and the main plot moves backward through time until they meet up. As I was nearing the end of the book, I suspected what would happen. I came home with 10 pages left to read but didn't read them at work, fearing that I would cry at the end. As always, I love a happy ending so I'm glad I was only mostly right. I loved this book. I think I would have loved it more if I had been able to read it in fewer chunks (work/life gets in the way of reading time). Because the two stories are interwoven in the novel, it can be disjointing to read, especially if you don't have enough time to get caught up in both stories. That happened later in the book for me. That's why I would like to reread it so that I can absorb more of the details that probably got lost on me because of the choppiness of my reading time. I did love this book though. I loved the imagery and the details in the writing. And this is only Erika Swyler's first novel. I will keep an eye out for her future work!
Read on,
Paula
