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The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde: The spellbinding mystery from the Richard & Judy bestselling author of The Glass House

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The sisters are drawn into the mystery until the summer takes a shocking turn - will they be bound together or torn apart?

The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde - Penguin Books UK

I had a very difficult time engaging in the story until about the halfway mark when things started to pick up. During her first visit to Black Rabbit Hall, Lorna discovers a horse’s skull displayed in the library.Romy already seems perfectly at home, prodding at the kiss of a snail’s fleshy sucker on the other side of the glass with chubby toddler fingers. From the opening chapter, there is an absorbing atmosphere of mystery that the author skilfully maintains throughout the book. In the present day, Jessie and her troubled family move to Applecote Manor thinking it'll be the perfect escape. The atmosphere in this country retreat is suffocating as Audrey’s parents cannot move on from this terrible event. It’s been left with much of the previous owners’ furniture and possessions in situ, making it even easier to imagine this as a place unable to break free from its past or local superstition.

The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde by Eve Chase | Waterstones

Two narratives, separated by fifty years, tell a story of sisters and secrets, of an unsolved mystery and its consequences, and of how family relationships are changed by events and by the passage of time. I probably would have given this novel 5 stars of it had focused more on the sisters and their missing cousin--it was such a evocative storyline and I wanted more of that. Eve Chase’s second novel The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde is a dual timeline story about mothers and daughters, sisters, secrets and grief, which switches between 1959 and some fifty years later when new owners move in to the house at the centre of a tragic local mystery. When the summer takes a deadly turn, the girls must unite behind an unthinkable choice or find themselves torn apart forever. Infused with tension and suspicion as lies are uncovered, I was gripped by the dark mystery that surrounds Audrey's disappearance and desperate to know who might be responsible.It was unsettling for all four sisters, and because the summer was warm they were able to spend much of their time outside, That was how they came to meet Tom and Harry Gore, whose family spent their summers at the neighbouring Coniston Place.

David Higham Associates Eve Chase - David Higham Associates

As her stepdaughter becomes nearly obsessed with the strange disappearance of a former resident, Jesse feels her life is slowly unraveling.From the first chapter, which completely grabs your attention, there is a fascinating atmosphere of mystery. Or the way in which the bond between Margot and her sisters – so strong in the beginning, almost telepathic – starts to unravel. There are twists at every corner and just when you think everything has been revealed, a new twist occurs. But once the threads that bound each story began to unveil themselves to the reader, I was enthralled.

The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde / The Wildling Sisters The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde / The Wildling Sisters

Because we don’t revisit that timeline for another whole chapter, the suspense that is created in waiting to see what happens is almost unbearable. The close knit sisters drew apart, and Margot was obsessed with finding out what really happened to Audrey. Evergreens are packed hard against the orangery’s windows, threatening to break them and scatter the wooden window-seat with poisonous berries, like beads. I found this often read like a classic female Gothic tale and found similarities between this and such renowned works as Jane Eyre and Rebecca. As the sisters become divided by new tensions when two handsome neighbors drop by, Margot finds herself drawn into the life Audrey left behind.But Jessie is already imagining oranges dangling, blood-warm and heavy in the hand, the glass doors flung back to the euphoria of summer, the peal of girls’ wild laughter.

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