I really liked this..I have seen some reviewers complaining of too much description, but that is exactly why I DID like it.... each to their own suppose..

I'm giving this 3 stars, because I can't give it 2.5. After reading the reviews on here, I was expecting an absolute stinker. It's not that bad. It's not that great either.

It's chief problem is two-fold: "Eve" sounds like a total idiot (at least the second Mrs. DeWinter was just very very young) and the author is overly deliberate with her word choices. The man who "Eve" is living with never really comes alive. I don't get a sense of who he is or why he's worth all this heart ache. He's no Maxim DeWinter, that's for certain. I found myself much more invested in the story of Benedicte, but even that was fairly predictable. I think there's a better book buried in the overly wrought prose somewhere.

Review Pending

This was the most amazingly sensual novel I have ever read. Sometimes purple prose has its place:

It was one of those days so intensely alive and aromatic, you could hear as well as smell the fig tree in the courtyard. Wasps hummed in the leaves as the fruit ripened and split; globes of warm, dark purple were dropping, ripping open as they landed with sodden gasps.

There are two concurrent storylines: that of Bénédicte Lincel and her sister Marthe, former owners of Les Genévriers, from the past, and the current owner, Dom and his girlfriend, dubbed Eve by him. Similar in tone, feeling, and even storyline to Daphne duMaurier's Rebecca, Eve is haunted by whispers about Dom's first wife, Rachel. Divorced? Dead? Murdered?

More than this, is the rundown Provençal hamlet of Les Genévriers itself haunted? Or are the mysterious goings on simply part of what happens to any ancient set of buildings that have lacked love, attention and care for many years?

The switches in narrator are sometimes hard to follow, to determine if we are listening to Bénédicte or Eve. Eve is rather aimless and directionless in the beginning, making her hard to connect with. Bénédicte's stories, especially those of working in the lavender fields, are sensually intoxicating. Her older sister Marthe becomes blind, and she is charged with "seeing" for her sister, who has become a parfumiere:

"I want you to look really hard, just like we used to, look right into the heart of the flowers and the spiny leaves and the earth and describe it to me. Use all your senses to make the pictures come alive for me...."

The sense of smell is expressed in this book more powerfully than I have read in any other novel, but sights, sounds, textures, temperatures, tastes are not neglected, either. This is not a book suited to zipping through fast, but one to savor. In the end, the mysteries are solved, and if a ghost or two lingers, it's probably a benevolent one.

I really liked this..I have seen some reviewers complaining of too much description, but that is exactly why I DID like it.... each to their own suppose..

this was a good spooky ghost story, but I'm just not the gothic, setting-orientated reader. I tend to skim large paragraphs of information, which also tends to get in the way of the author setting the mood.

The Lantern. Well, it started off well. But it just wasn't as good as I'd hoped. I think I wanted more mystery. It was a little predictable.

Beautifully written with deep characters, but somehow it didn't live up to its potential.

3.5 stars.

Beautifully written. Lawrenson truly captured the beauty and wonder of the French countryside with her long, evocative descriptions. I was particularly impressed with her continued inclusion of all five senses, especially smell.

Would have received a higher rating, but it ultimately reminded me too much of [b:Rebecca|12873|Rebecca|Daphne du Maurier|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298414903s/12873.jpg|46663].

SPOILER: Okay, so on one hand I loved this book so much that I literally tore through it in a matter of days. The writing is lush and gorgeous. It had a fantastic set-up, a very gothic story set in the amazing French countryside. I was literally ready to call this a perfect book (which is rare for me) and then . . . pffst. The last 30-40 pages just fizzled out. All of the careful set-up, the questions, the lies, the secrets and then . . . it all turned out to be just a misunderstanding. All of it. (Well, except one very small thing, the cause of some of the "supernatural" elements, but literally everything else, the missing girls, Rachel and even Dom's behavior, all perfect misunderstandings and explained away.) I wanted a much bigger payoff, something more worthy of the amazing set-up.