Mary Rose

Written by Geoffrey Girard

Narrated by Henrietta Meire

Mary Rose Moreland and Simon Blake are the perfect couple: successful young professionals in Philadelphia, attractive, madly in love, and ready to start a life together. When they travel to England for Simon to ask her parents' permission to marry Mary Rose, he learns an unsettling secret: Mary Rose disappeared when she was a little girl while the family was vacationing on a remote Scottish island. She reappeared mysteriously thirty-three days later in the exact same spot without a scratch on her and no memory of what had happened.

After Simon hears about this disturbing episode in Mary Rose's childhood, he becomes obsessed with finding out what happened. He proceeds to launch his own investigation and arranges during their honeymoon for them to visit the island where she disappeared. But as Mary Rose's behavior gets stranger after their engagement, the need for Simon to unlock the truth about her past grows even more urgent. What he uncovers is beyond his most terrifying fears.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Oct 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781681689654

Geoffrey Girard

Born in Germany, raised in New Jersey, and currently living in Ohio, Geoffrey Girard graduated from Washington College with a literature degree and worked as an advertising copywriter and marketing manager before becoming a high school English teacher. He is currently the English department chair at a private boy’s school in Ohio and is a Masters candidate in creative writing at Miami University of Ohio. Visit him online at GeoffreyGirard.com.

Reviews for Mary Rose

[lorifox · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mary Rose by Geoffrey Girard is a gothic tale of a young girl who, at the age of 6, disappeared for 33 days, only to reappear in the exact same place with no memory of where she had been. As her fiancé turned husband searches for the source of her increasingly bizarre behavior and artwork, we are drawn into a tale that is never quite a love story nor a ghost story, but rather a blending of the two that while skillfully told, ends with questions left unanswered. Perhaps that was the point to add to the mystery of the tale.

In the 1960’s, Alfred Hitchcock attempted to bring the story to the silver screen. He never succeeded, but a Scottish script was written and the play was a success in Britain in the 1920’s.

[sweetiegherkin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Simon Blake is about to marry the woman of his dreams, but when they travel to England to visit her parents, they tell him a bizarre story from her childhood. Mary Rose went missing while the family was vacation on a remote island in Scotland, and then reappeared a month later with no explanation of where she had been. Now adult Mary Rose is showing signs of PTSD, as if she might be recalling some trauma from her childhood.This was an engaging and compelling read as a modern re-working of J.M. Barrie's play of the same name. Having not read the original, I cannot compare the two. However, this one was well-written, with good pacing as the story starts off with everything seemingly normal and ramping up the pacing of eerie/weird/macabre things happening. A lot of that is kind of vague, so if you like tidy stories with definitive conclusions, you might not like this book. However, if you like your horror more spooky than terrifying, this is the book for you.For audiophiles, narrator Henrietta Meire did a superb job of bringing out a large cast of characters with a variety of accents, ages, and genders.The book's afterword goes into details about the J.M. Barrie play, as well as Alfred Hitchcock's failed attempts to turn it into a movie. There's actually a surprising amount of biographical information about Hitchcock included here, which is a neat addition.

[dianekeenoy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is based on a ghost story written by J.M. Barrie in 1920. It was also Alfred Hitchcock's dream project for more than 50 years. Unfortunately, the subject matter was too upsetting for Universal Pictures and they wouldn't allow him to make it. I didn't know any of this when I started reading this book last night. I couldn't finish it until this afternoon because it scared me after my husband went up to bed! And I read Stephen King and Dean Koontz with no problem! It's the story of Mary Rose Moreland and her fiancé, Simon Blake, both successful professionals living in Philadelphia. When they go to England so that Simon can ask her parents for permission to marry Mary Rose, he finds out that she had disappeared when she was 7 years old and reappeared 33 days later on the exact spot where she had vanished without any memory of the missing days. Once Simon hears this, he wants to find out what happened hoping to help her after her behavior becomes stranger and stranger.