Thank you to the author, publisher Aria, and online book club The Pigeonhole for the chance to read this. This is an honest and voluntary review.

 

After years swapping between winters nannying in London and summers as a Greek tour rep, Grace returns to her native Ireland as a full-time nanny for the Fitzmahons in the impressive, and possibly haunted, Hollowpark House.

 

An easy to read story combining the history of family homes, the devastating impact of the Irish potato famine, some spookiness, long unsolved mysteries and a little bit of romance. If you don’t go into this with too high expectations there is plenty to enjoy here.

 

Grace is a fairly well-developed character and apart from a predictable and tiresome crush on the father of the child she is nannying, manages to solidly carry moat of the plot. The story hinges on Grace being open to the possibility of ghosts and sensing that something isn’t what it seems with the Fitzmahons while also having believable reasons for staying. And for the most part, and certainly the much stronger first half of the book, she fulfils her role well.

 

The secondary characters are also pretty solid, with people with secrets hiding them well, and people who are red herrings acting just suspiciously enough. Unfortunately for me the first half of the book sucked me in too well and I had much higher expectations of what the overall story would deliver. 

 

Even as some of my fellow Pigeonhole readers expressed doubt over some plot points I was willing to let them go to follow the flow of the story. But, a very anticlimactic resolution to the main corporeal threat of the story, followed by an extended ‘what happens next’ section that explains things that could have been left ambiguous, left me sadly disappointed.