Miramont's Ghost

Written by Elizabeth Hall

Narrated by Emily Durante

Miramont Castle, built in 1897 and mysteriously abandoned three years later, is home to many secrets. Only one person knows the truth: Adrienne Beauvier, granddaughter of the Comte de Challembelles and cousin to the man who built the castle.

Clairvoyant from the time she could talk, Adrienne’s visions show her the secrets of those around her. When her visions begin to reveal dark mysteries of her own aristocratic French family, Adrienne is confronted by her formidable Aunt Marie, who is determined to keep the young woman silent at any cost. Marie wrenches Adrienne from her home in France and takes her to America, to Miramont Castle, where she keeps the girl isolated and imprisoned. Surrounded by eerie premonitions, Adrienne is locked in a life-or-death struggle to learn the truth and escape her torment.

Reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, this hauntingly atmospheric tale is inspired by historical research into the real-life Miramont Castle in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Feb 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781501210297

Elizabeth Hall

Elizabeth Hall, the bestselling author of Miramont’s Ghost and In the Blue Hour, is a former teacher, communications consultant, and radio show host. She resides on an island in the Pacific Northwest, where she indulges in the fiber arts and keeps an eye out for whales.

Reviews for Miramont's Ghost

[nospi-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Miramont's Ghost is a fictional story woven around historical fact. Adrienne is the granddaughter of a French count and displays precognition just like the count's late wife. Her stories of seeing things that will happen scare the local people and Adrienne is told to keep quiet about them. Her horrid Aunt Marie takes Adrienne, as a teen, to the castle in Colorado her son built.

The writing is excellent and the story compelling. Avoiding spoilers makes it difficult to say much more about the story. There are some disturbing themes around children that might be a trigger for some.

This well written, yet disturbing story will stay with me for quite a while.This book was one of the free books available through Amazon's Prime Kindle First program for January.

[rosenectur · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A Kindle First selection. First of all, I do not like spooky stories. I am not normally a “ghost story” type of person. I didn’t know it was a ghost story at first. I thought it was going to be a supernatural period piece. A sort of steam-punk-lite book was what I got from the description. Well, I was wrong. It was a ghost/horror-lite story. The main character is one you have a lot of sympathy for and well you end up really hating the antagonists. The fact that someone can dream up such cruel characters really baffles me. These character aren’t just bad they are cruel and evil at heart and the further the book goes into their motivations the more you dislike them. Well written but with characters I’d like to forget which is why it gets an “okay” rating.

[Leah Barton Tew · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book had a lot of repetitive descriptions and it was hard to feel sympathy for the characters; most were either evil or weak. I also question the decision to claim such egregious acts committed by people who actually lived. Yes, it's been a long time and yes, there is a disclaimer at the end, but it still seemed to be in poor taste. Also, the narrator's male voice impersonations were difficult to listen to.

[Mrinalini Ghoshal · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Absolutely awful. Very depressing and meandering. Would not recommend at all

[saudia89 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Miramont's Ghost is a mind boggling story about a young girl named Adrienne Beauvier. Adrienne was born a clairvoyant, the same as her grandmother, thus can see things others cannot. At the beginning of the story we meet a young Adrienne who is full of life and love. As the tale goes on we see how Adrienne responds to loss and goes from lively to just a hollow person. The story eventually centers on Miramont Castle, which is built my Adrienne's cousin and then abandoned only a few years after completion. I absolutely love how Elizabeth Hall has developed the character of Adrienne Beauvier. The last 1/4 of this book turns pretty tragic and I was literally left mouth agape at some parts. If you are looking for a good read and can stomach a gut wrenching ghost story, then this is the book for you!

[library_gal · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have mixed feelings about this book. It was not the ghost story I was expecting. In fact, the ghost is rarely mentioned. The book was based on real-life events, however from what I can gather, the main character was fictional, which seems a bit odd. I did love the first part of the book describing the main character Adrienne's early years while she was under her loving grandfather's protection. I was fascinated by her clairvoyant visions. Her grandfather's death and the arrival of her awful aunt and cousin drastically changed her life. The mid-section of the book drug on a bit describing her life up to the age of 16 when her family was ruled by her domineering aunt who wished to keep her clairvoyance hidden from the world. The last section became downright depressing as Adrienne was forced to move to America to serve her aunt and cousin at Miramont Castle. I don't require a happy ending to every story, but what happens to her there at the hands of her aunt and cousin was beyond awful!

[leighpod · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

History Far Surpasses Fiction

I, as many other reviewers stated, was led eagerly to this book by its hype and description. Unfortunately, the best thing about Miramont's Ghost is the Afterword wherein the history is laid out. I though as I read, "" Now there's a story.""
As far as what you get in the actual text- a boring, dragged out, frustratingly undramatic tale told with weak compliant, uninteresting, and exceedingly boring characters, not one of whom seems to have the least bit of interest in mastering his or her own fate- and that goes for the ghost, too. A supposed spine-tingling gothic ghost story told in a castle and we don't even have a single good haunting. 's. Hall is a good writer, but this is weak story-telling-- made even weaker when one is privy to the historical facts. I would not recommend nor chose to read another by this writer.

[avoraciousreader · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

1.5*Book source ~ Kindle FirstFrom Goodreads:Miramont Castle, built in 1897 and mysteriously abandoned three years later, is home to many secrets. Only one person knows the truth: Adrienne Beauvier, granddaughter of the Comte de Challembelles and cousin to the man who built the castle.Clairvoyant from the time she could talk, Adrienne’s visions show her the secrets of those around her. When her visions begin to reveal dark mysteries of her own aristocratic French family, Adrienne is confronted by her formidable Aunt Marie, who is determined to keep the young woman silent at any cost. Marie wrenches Adrienne from her home in France and takes her to America, to Miramont Castle, where she keeps the girl isolated and imprisoned. Surrounded by eerie premonitions, Adrienne is locked in a life-or-death struggle to learn the truth and escape her torment.I couldn’t even write my own synopsis of this story, so I did something I have never done before...copied from Goodreads. This story turned out far different than I thought it would be. Or even what it could be. A woman with visions *should* be interesting especially since it’s set in the past where people are not nearly as forgiving as they are today of those kinds of idiosyncrasies. But this book is boring. So very boring. I slogged through it and the last 20% or so wasn’t horrible, but I just couldn’t get into it. The plot had definite potential, but the execution was not for me.

[al9g · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is Hall’s first novel and I found it to be an exceptionally good freshman effort. She has taken the historical information around Miramont Castle (Manitou Springs, Colorado), the persistent legend of the ghost, and the facts as they are available and created a wonderfully imaginative work of fiction that creates a back story to account for the presence of the ghost. She is a solid writer and her characterizations are so very good that despite being aware of how the story had to end, I still felt abject sympathy for Adrienne and kept looking for some miraculous rescue or some way out of her predicament. Hall constructs her characters and relationships with care and intricately weaves a deceitful plot into the lives of this tragic family that fills in the back story of the castle’s beginnings, its occupants, and the coming of the ghost. It is engaging and satisfying on many levels. Hall has researched the book well, at least from what little I know of the castle, having been there once and learned some bits and pieces and snippets of information. And her story accounting for the castle and its occupants is delightfully duplicitous, elegantly constructed, and entirely plausible given some of the history that is known. Well done.

[libraryman_76021 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I acquired this book (at no cost) through Amazon's Kindle First. In all honesty, I'm not sure that it's something I would have grabbed if I'd had to pay for it. But if that had happened, I would have missed out on a totally engrossing story.The book starts in late 19th-Century France with an ebullient child (Adrienne) gifted with second sight. Unfortunately, there are certain members of the family who are not happy with the child's ability to pierce through deception and secrecy. And with that, I was totally hooked.I was completely unwilling to put the book down, so it perhaps was not a wise decision to read this during my lunch hour at work. And by the time I got to the end, I was emotionally drained. (It's not often that a book brings me almost to tears.)

[cariola_6 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I got sucked into buying this book--not my usual fare--when it was on a Kindle special. My rating of 1.5 stars is somewhat generous, based on the simple fact that it initially drew me in (and it was also fairly short). It's the mid-19th century in France, and the young Adrienne lives in what seems to be an almost perfect world in her aristocratic grandpere's mansion. Her mother, the beautiful but unhappy Genevieve, is a distant mother who pretty much sits around waiting for her husband to either visit or call her to Paris (which doesn't happen often). But at least Adrienne is adored by her grandpere and her governess, Lucie.. But when Adrienne begins to have visions, she rattles some family secrets. Apparently her grandmere also had the second sight, and the family locked here away so that people wouldn't talk about her. She apparently died shortly after Genevieve's birth.Enter the evil older aunt, Marie, and her pampered son, Julian. Marie disapproves of everyone and everything. She has come home for two reasons: first, because Julian, a priest, needs to recuperate from being poisoned by the eucharist wine at his church in New Mexico; and second, to ransack the house for treasures to take back to America for the palace Julian intends to build in his next southwestern parish. Marie and Julian return to France periodically to cause more havoc throughout the novel, until eventually they take Adrienne with them to Colorado.While the title suggests that this is a horror story, there is no ghost in Miramont until the epilogue.. But in the meantime, there is an abundance of cruelty, sexual abuse, child molestation, lies, betrayals, and unbelievably bad parenting. By the time I got towards the end, the "ick factor" was pretty high. (Can you think of one more revolting, abusive situation? Of course you can.) If the author's intent was to make me want to kill Marie with my bare hands, she succeeded. But that isn't enough, in my view, to make a novel good.. Like Adrienne, I felt somewhat betrayed by the author and the way she kept inserting more and more horrors into the story. I stayed up late last night to finish the book--not because it was so engrossing, but because I just wanted it to be over.

[mishker-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Adrienne Beauvier, granddaughter to the Count of Challembelles has always had visions, a gift of clairvoyance, just like her grandmother. To a young Adrienne, her visions are nothing but fun stories and insights into the lives of others. However, to most everyone else, Adrienne's visions cause distress and they believe her to be troubled, much like her late grandmother was. Adrienne's Aunt Marie, a domineering and manipulative force in the family is especially unsettled by Adrienne's stories of her visions and does not want any more rumors about her family flying around their small French town. As Adrienne grows, the two people in her life who provided security with her gift are taken away from her. Aunt Marie believes she has the perfect solution to the her family's issues with Adrienne; she will bring Adrienne to her home in Colorado, the newly built Miramont Castle, to live with her cousin, the Father Julien Morier. Once Adrienne arrives at Miramont, however, she realizes that there are no limits to her Aunt's meddling ways.This book was not at all what I expected, but I was still on the edge of my seat the entire way through. First of all, this is not a story of a haunted house, but rather about how the life of a person might cause them to haunt a house. Adrienne's story is tragic and there is no happy ending here, even though at points the story seems similar to a fairy tale with an evil aunt, a locked away gifted girl and the hopes of prince charming coming to the rescue. This is a story that grows with suspense and has many little mysteries, from Adrienne's first visions there is a growing feeling that something just isn't right. The writing does a beautiful job adding to the foreboding atmosphere, there is a lyrical prose and abundant detail to set the scene and create the unease of the characters surrounding Adrienne. Most interesting to me was that the story included many true details from the actual building of Miramont Castle and the actual mysteries surrounding the building intrigued me even more. Overall, Miramont's Ghost is an emotional, tense and unsuspected read for someone not looking for a happy ending.This book was provided for free in return for an honest review.

[helcura_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is not really a ghost story, but rather historical fiction. As such, it is interesting and competently written. I particularly enjoyed the local details and the clear basis in historical fact. I was quickly able to determine who were the real historical characters and who were the fictional ones. This helped as the fictional heroine has an unutterably miserable life. I found myself wanting to scream at her that being a bar maid would be better than clinging to dream of returning to her childhood of wealth and privilege. In truth, though, we are all more often trapped by our inability to imagine that losing everything might be better than keeping what little we have, and Adrienne's inability to escape her situation is not unrealistic.This is a quick and enjoyable read. Definitely worth owning if you're interested in Colorado history and enjoy historical fiction, otherwise, let the library store it for you.

[bookchickdi · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am a sucker for a good book based on a true story. Writers who can take an incident and spin off an imaginative story from it always impress me. The Book Club Beach Club recently read The Girl Who Came Home, based on a story of fourteen people from a small Irish village who were on the Titanic, and I just finished Elizabeth Hall's Miramont's Ghost, about a reported haunted castle in Manitou Springs, Colorado.Young Adrienne lives in her grand-pere's castle in countryside of France, with her mother Genevieve. Her father is a diplomat who works in Paris and they rarely see him. Her aunt Marie is a malevolent presence, striking terror in the hearts of the servants, and her family as well.Adrienne has the gift (or curse) of second sight. She can clearly see visions of things that will happen, but at the age of seven is too young to know not to speak of them in public. Her grandmother had the same gift, and the entire village shunned her. Adrienne's grand-pere fears the same will happen to Adrienne.Lucie, Adrienne's governess, began writing Adrienne's visions in a journal, and the discovery of this journal has repercussions. Marie convinces Genevieve that it would be in Adrienne's best interests for her to accompany Marie to America to stay with Marie's son Julien, a parish priest who built a big castle for himself in Manitou Springs, Colorado. Marie's evil intentions become clear when she imprisons Adrienne in the castle.Hall weaves an intriguing story, likened by many to the classic Rebecca, about a family with dangerous secrets, and a young woman who must use her wits and gift of visions to survive. I flew through this book, reading it in one day because I had to find out what happens to Adrienne.The setting of late 19th century France was fascinating, and Hall's descriptive writing added greatly to the story. She set one scene at the Paris Opera House that was so beautiful, if I closed my eyes, I would swear I was there.I loved how Hall took this true story of a priest's haunted castle and created this world. Giving Adrienne the gift of visions, the plucky governess, the evil aunt- all of these are combined to create an atmospheric suspenseful novel that is perfect for curling up with a cup of tea on a snowy day by the fire.I also appreciated her Bibliography at the end, enabling the reader to find out more of the true story of Miramont.

[darcia_10 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The premise for this story intrigued me, but it just didn't seem to go anywhere. The pace is slow, painfully so at times. The plot, like the characters, has a tendency to wallow in its own tormented weight. The characters are all drowning in misery. No one is happy, everyone has major secrets, and they all behave as if their situation is an unalterable life sentence. If you're looking for even the slightest bit of respite from unhappiness, you will not find it within these pages. The writing itself is fine. Elizabeth Hall is able to pull us into her story and show us her characters' world. I just wish Adrienne had given me a spark of something worth clinging to.