Stevie‘s review of The Secret Woman by Victoria Holt
Gothic Romance published by Sourcebooks Casablanca 06 May 14
This is a proper gothic novel. Not only is the heroine an orphan brought up by a relative who resents her and leads her to believe she will end her days alone and unwanted, but the story opens with the heroine suspected of murdering said relative. Throw in a hero with dark secrets in his past, clandestine marriages, a mysterious castle (albeit a replica built by a newly wealthy Victorian) and an island where superstitious natives perform strange rituals, and you have more gothic elements than half a dozen of the classic novels that this one takes its cues from. Fortunately the book’s heroine doesn’t take all these elements seriously all the time.
Anna Brett is the daughter of a captain in the British Indian Army and his rather frivolous wife, who is sent back to England to be educated and to spend the school holidays with her father’s unmarried sister. Aunt Charlotte lives in a rambling Tudor house that is overcrowded with the antiques she buys and sells and, after both Anna’s parents die, she brings Anna up as an unpaid servant with the expectation that she will one day take over the business. Meanwhile, Anna is fascinated by the Creditons, a wealthy merchant family who have built a massive copy of a Norman castle nearby and who occasionally buy and sell furniture through Aunt Charlotte’s shop.
On Anna’s first visit to Crediton Castle as a young girl, she meets the enigmatic Redvers Stretton, the illegitimate son of Edward Crediton who has been brought up as a member of the household and now captains one of the family’s trading vessels. Some years pass before the pair meet again, by which time Anna is a grown woman, and a flirtation develops. However, this leads to a row with Aunt Charlotte, who falls ill as the result of a fall down the stairs (after tripping over one of her antiques), leading to the entry of Nurse Chantel Loman into the household.
Chantel is a great character, who is obviously scheming, although it takes a long time to figure out whether her plots are with the aim of helping or hindering Anna’s interest in Redvers. Meanwhile, just about everyone else in the story is also hiding something or someone from their past, and the complications can only increase when all the main characters set off to Australia and then, in most cases, from Australia to an obscure Polynesian island on one of the Creditons’ ships.
I really enjoyed trying to figure out how all the various plot threads and mysteries tied togethe, and am glad to have some of my suspicions proved right, although a couple of the solutions to problems are a little unexpected and one came about a little too easily. Definitely a book I’ll have to reread at some point for the sheer pleasure of the story, as well as to try to spot any clues I might have missed the first time around.
Grade: B
Summary:
Dark Secrets. Lost Treasure. Delicious Scandal.Anna Brett fears she’s doomed to be a governess to an English family for the rest of her life. But when the dashing captain Redvers Stretton struts back into her life, she is whisked away from the bleak English countryside forever. But is that such a good thing?
While the charming blue-eyed captain makes Anna forget her troubled past, he is hiding dark secrets of his own. It’s no coincidence that Stretton’s ship is named The Secret Woman. During their voyage to the South Seas, with a murder dogging her steps and the mystery of a missing treasure haunting her dreams, Anna is forced to confront the clever captain—a man who may have just as many secrets as she.
Read an excerpt.
