The House of Brides: A Novel
By Jane Cockram
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Jane Cockram makes her thrilling debut with this page-turning tale of psychological suspense in which a young woman whose life is in tatters flees to the safety of a family estate in England, but instead of comfort finds chilling secrets and lies.
Miranda’s life and career has been a roller-coaster ride. Her successful rise to the top of the booming lifestyle industry as a social media influencer led to a humiliating fall after a controversial product she endorsed flopped. Desperate to get away from the hate-spewing trolls shaming her on the internet, she receives a mysterious letter from a young cousin in England that plunges her into a dark family mystery.
Miranda’s mother Tessa Summers, a famous author, died when Miranda was a child. The young woman’s only connection to the Summers family is through Tessa’s famous book The House of Brides—a chronicle of the generations of women who married into the infamous Summers family and made their home in the rambling Barnsley House, the family’s estate. From Gertrude Summers, a famed crime novelist, to Miranda’s grandmother Beatrice, who killed herself after setting fire to Barnsley while her children slept, each woman in The House of Brides is more notorious than the next. The house’s current “bride” is the beautiful, effervescent Daphne, her Uncle Max’s wife—a famed celebrity chef who saved Barnsley from ruin turning the estate into an exclusive culinary destination and hotel.
Curious about this legendary family she has never met, Miranda arrives at Barnsley posing as a prospective nanny answering an advertisement. She’s greeted by the compelling yet cold housekeeper Mrs. Mins, and meets the children and her Uncle Max—none of whom know her true identity. But Barnsley is not what Miranda expected. The luxury destination and award-winning restaurant is gone, and Daphne is nowhere to be found. Most disturbing, one of the children is in a wheelchair after a mysterious accident. What happened in this house? Where is Daphne? What darkness lies hidden in Barnsley?
Jane Cockram
Jane Cockram was born and educated in Australia, where she studied Journalism at RMIT, majoring in Literature. After earning a post-graduate diploma in Publishing and Communication at Melbourne University, she worked in sales for Pan Macmillan Publishers and then as fiction buyer at Borders, fulfilling a childhood dream of reading for a living. Cockram spent a year living in the West Country of England, where The House of Brides is set, and still daydreams about returning. In the meantime, she resides in Melbourne with her husband and two children. The House of Brides is her debut novel.
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Reviews for The House of Brides
23 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Miranda Courtenay has had a very public fall from grace, Her career as a life style influencer has come to an end. But when she finds a letter from her twelve year old cousin whom she has never met asking for help from Mirandas Mother. She decides to go to Barnsley house her mothers family home. Her mother wrote the famous book about the house it was a chronicle of the generations of women who married into the infamous Summer family From Gertrude Summer the famed crime novelist to Mirandas grand mother Beatrice who committed suicide after setting the house on fire. Miranda decides to go to England to see the family home for herself and to help her cousin and also hopefully meet other family members When she gets there she has to pretend to be a nanny for the children . As her Mother left the family years ago and had no contact with them because of something that she did. Will they accept her if they find out she is related to them. Or is she doomed to follow the path of the other Summer women?
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5“Everyone seemed to be hiding something. There were things that seemed not quite right, parts of the story that didn’t quite ring true. Things only another storyteller would notice.”After her social media career implodes in a rather spectacular manner, Miranda Courtenay is left reviled and broke. Though her wealthy father has arranged a fresh start for her, a letter from a young cousin she has never met sees Miranda flee Australia to her late mother’s ancestral home, Barnsley House, on England’s west coast.As the setting of a best selling biography, ‘The House of Brides’ written by Miranda’s mother, Tessa Courtenay née Summers, Miranda has always wanted to visit Barnsley House to meet her estranged relatives, and learn more about the mother she never really knew, but she soon discovers the house is a maelstrom of secrets, resentments, tragedy, and scandal.I’d describe The House of Brides as contemporary gothic, with what I thought were obvious echoes of genre classics such as Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, with perhaps even a nod to the works of V.C Andrews. Cockram certainly creates an eerie atmosphere in The House of Brides. Barnsley House is an isolated rambling stone mansion on a cliff’s edge, half shuttered due to the temporary closure of the hotel and restaurant operated by Max Summer, and his bride, Daphne, inhabited by a group of reticent residents. As documented in Tessa’s book, it has also been the site of both triumph and tragedy, especially for the women of the Summers family, and is rumoured to have the ghost of a ‘House’ bride lurking in the East wing.Unfortunately I really didn’t care much for Miranda. I may have been more forgiving of her character if she was aged closer to 16, rather than 26, as it was I found her to be painfully immature, self centred, and occasionally wilfully obtuse. At times I didn’t understand her behaviour at all, and that made it difficult to connect with her. As for the rest of the characters, they are suitably enigmatic for a gothic novel, most of whom have an edge of menace, or madness, or both.While overall I thought The House of Brides had a decent premise, I did find it was a little messy and disjointed in places. Some of that, I think, had to do with the poor formatting of the e-arc. With plenty of intrigue, and atmosphere I do think most of the elements were there for a great story, but it didn’t quite all come together for me.