[Review] The Secret Rooms - Catherine Bailey

Publisher: Penguin
Price: 11,70 €
480 pages
Language: English

Contents:

John is the 9th Duke of Rutland and this book starts off with his death in 1940.

He dies in the servants's quarter of his home, Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire and the reason for that is only a small piece of the mysterious story of the family.

Several decades later it is the author of this book who tries to find out what everybody wanted to keep a secret.

My opinion:

The story really intrigued me although it was quite hard to get into it at the beginning. But after 20 pages I was addicted. Catherine Bailey knows how to tell an exciting story and I couldn't stop reading as I wanted to know what the secrets of the family were.

Apparently everything in this book really happened and that's what really got to me. Reading the story of people who have lived such a long time ago and the letters and photos that are included added a lot to the atmosphere.

But I have to say that the second half of the book wasn't as captivating and a lot of questions remained unanswered. I felt a bit disappointed when I finished the book because I was expecting another revelation that would explain all the mysteries, but nothing.

Nevertheless I really liked the ending and I think that this book is definitely worth reading more than once.

I just feel that I would pick up a lot more hints than I did in the first read.

The characters felt surprisingly real although we just know about them what they wrote in their letters and what the author found in archives. 

I was really emotional sometimes, feeling the grief or happiness of the characters and I think it is remarkable that Catherine Bailey was able to develop such round and distinguished characters just by unraveling their story.

I definitely think that this book deserves much more attention than it receives and recommend it to everyone who doesn't absolutely detest history.

Rating: