Review: ...perfect read on a dark rainy evening.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 10, 2013
Abby Kimball moved to New England with her boyfriend when he accepted a new job. He made a good salary which gave her some time to settle in and decide whether to return to teaching or take some of her other experience and try something new. Boyfriend Brad spent a lot of time working or hanging out with his other coworkers that left Abby with a lot of alone time on her hands.Abby decides to take a tour of historic homes in the area where she meets Ned. He was the docent for the last home on the tour. He also was a witness to a very strange experience she had in the house. As she entered one of the rooms she saw a family scene but it wasn’t a recreation using actors it was a haunting vision of a family who had lived in the house nearly a century ago. Having never had anything like that happen before she was positive something was very wrong with her. Thankfully Ned was helpful and encouraging and open to what she described to him. He even offered to help her investigate the vision and why she was seeing it in the first place. Abby leery at first eventually decides to spend her free time exploring and she finds out these visions may be connected to her own past.Dollycas’s ThoughtsIf you are familiar with Sheila Connolly or her books at all you know history is a major theme that runs trough her stories and that she is very interested in genealogy. That is what first drew me to this story but she is also a fantastic storyteller and that is what kept me reading.I struggled a bit with Abby and Brad’s relationship at first but things started to click into place there for me rather quickly. As an avid mystery reader I kept waiting for Ned to show his ulterior motives and be the bad guy. Ned does have secrets but in a whole different direction than I originally thought.What I really enjoyed was the process Abby followed to dig in to the local history and the visions she continued to have and the emotions she felt. People are investigating into exploring their family trees and history right now. With so much information being made available on the internet and the several websites created to help people connect the story is very current. Granted not everyone has visions like Abby but it is not beyond the realm of possibility. I have decided to keep an open mind on anything of that nature. My parents have both passed away and while I have never “seen” them or any of my other relatives there are times I just “feel” their presence. I think it would be cool to have way to really connect with them and learn more of my family history to pass on to my kids.I thought this was a very original story tying a little paranormal activity into a different type of mystery with a bit of romance thrown in too. Connolly’s  writing is very descriptive and I love it.It was a nice, light,  easy read and a perfect book for me to curl up with on a dark rainy evening.