Title: The Curse of Penryth Hall
Author: Jess Armstrong
Genre: Mystery/thriller
Rating:4.5 out of 5
After the Great War, American heiress Ruby Vaughn made a life for herself running a rare bookstore alongside her octogenarian employer and house mate in Exeter. She’s always avoided dwelling on the past, even before the war, but it always has a way of finding her. When Ruby is forced to deliver a box of books to a folk healer living deep in the Cornish countryside, she is brought back to the one place she swore she’d never return. A more sensible soul would have delivered the package and left without rehashing old wounds. But no one has ever accused Ruby of being sensible. Thus begins her visit to Penryth Hall.
A foreboding fortress, Penryth Hall is home to Ruby’s once dearest friend, Tamsyn, and her husband, Sir Edward Chenowyth. It’s an unsettling place, and after a more unsettling evening, Ruby is eager to depart. But her plans change when Penryth’s bells ring for the first time in thirty years. Edward is dead; he met a gruesome end in the orchard, and with his death brings whispers of a returned curse. It also brings Ruan Kivell, the person whose books brought her to Cornwall, the one the locals call a Pellar, the man they believe can break the curse. Ruby doesn’t believe in curses―or Pellars―but this is Cornwall and to these villagers the curse is anything but lore, and they believe it will soon claim its next Tamsyn.
To protect her friend, Ruby must work alongside the Pellar to find out what really happened in the orchard that night.
I liked Ruby a lot in this novel. She’s mostly very sure of herself, confident, and capable. She’s spunky, and I like her attitude. I also enjoyed Ruan a lot, the inscrutable, enigmatic Pellar. There were a lot of layers in this novel: old relationships, memories, current relationships, changed people and friendships, the local culture, the murder mystery…
The author did an excellent job of weaving all these layers together into a rich tapestry of story. I never figured out who the killer was, and the reveal surprised me. I enjoyed this read, and wondering how everything was going to work itself out kept me reading far too late into the night.
Jess Armstrong lives in New Orleans. The Curse of Penryth Hall is her debut novel.
(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)
Tomorrow Is Another Day 