I read about half of this book before giving up. I like the premise, but the author's writing style is not working for me right now. I kept getting distracted by her elaborate, unusual sentence construction and spending my time debating which words should be weighted or whether different comma placement would work better. Characters and plot lines got dropped for atmosphere and wordiness in a "can't see the forest for the trees" kind of problem. It gave me the feeling that the author was trying to hard to be literary and write something that was more grand than a mere novel. To an extent, it works well with Violet's personality, but I didn't have the patience to keep wading.

Hopefully the next reader will be more in the mood, and maybe I'll try this story again some day.

Sent to the winner of the Lesbian Sweeps

The INTL Lesbian-themed fiction sweepstakes books keep coming! The books arrived safely on this warm day; many thanks!

Later: I was intrigued to learn that Vernon Lee/Violet Paget was an actual person, famed for her supernatural fiction (and sometimes compared to M. R. James, whose style I adore). Given how much supernatural fiction I've read, I'm sure I must have encountered her work, perhaps in an anthology - but I can't bring any to mind... Anyway, the setup for the novel was interesting, and I generally like alternating-character/different-time-stream stories, but this one just didn't grab me. But now I do want to hunt up some of the works of the real Violet Paget!

I left this book in the charming and quirky icebox-repurposed-as-LFL; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in MA here.]

*** Released for the 2019 Keep Them Moving release challenge. ***

*** Released for the 2019 One-Word Title release challenge. ***