What readers think of Black Rabbit Hall, plus links to write your own review.

A modern Gothic novel with characters you'll love and hate!

I tend to love mysteries that involve old houses with some kind of secret history. Black Rabbit Hall is such a place. The story is woven between generations, the first being the Alton family in 1968 and present-day Lorna who is looking for a venue for her upcoming wedding. Life seems simple and good for the Alton family until tragedy strikes. The past and the present unfold until the stories collide at the end. The characters are believable and have interesting interior lives. I was kept guessing up to the end. If you are a fan of Kate Morton you will like this book.

BLACK RABBIT HALL is two stories that, for the first half of the book, only seem to be related by photographs showing one story's main character, Lorna, as a child standing in front of Black Rabbit Hall, where everything takes place in the other story. So that's the mystery for the first half of the book: why was Lorna at Black Rabbit Hall when she was a child? Both stories bored me. They were wordy; that is, descriptions went on and on. "OK," I thought, "I get it. Get on with it, please!"

In one story, Amber lives at Black Rabbit Hall in the 1960s with her brothers and sister and their beautiful, perfect mother, soon out of the picture to be replaced by an evil stepmother. Oh, and with her comes a handsome stepbrother.

In the other story, present-day Lorna and her fiance explore wedding venues, Black Rabbit Hall being Lorna's choice because of the aforementioned photographs. Black Rabbit Hall is now owned/managed by the old evil stepmother, and Lorna spends the night there, alone with the evil stepmother and a maid.

When the two stories finally do come together, BLACK RABBIT HALL is less boring. It is not an original story, though; it is ages old: an evil stepmother, the suffering children, a baby given up for adoption, reunification, even a kind of comeuppance for the evil stepmother. Haven't we all seen this story over and over? Heck, I even remember watching Shirley Temple in this story on Sunday mornings. And, of course, the end is wonderful for all left alive.

I'll say this for BLACK RABBIT HALL: the second half of the book has more mysteries. Even so, this book made me feel like I read and saw it before. It reminded me too much of stories that appealed to me when I was a child.