In 1913, a little girl arrives in Brisbane, Australia, and is taken in by a dockmaster and his wife. She doesn’t know her name, and the only clue to her identity is a book of fairy tales tucked inside a white suitcase. When the girl, called Nell, grows up, she starts to piece together bits of her story, but just as she’s on the verge of going to England to trace the mystery to its source, her grandaughter, Cassandra, is left in her care. When Nell dies, Cassandra finds herself the owner of a cottage in Cornwall, and makes the journey to England to finally solve the puzzle of Nell’s origins. Shifting back and forth over a span of nearly 100 years, this is a sprawling, novel, with family secrets, stories-within-stories, even a maze and a Dickensian rag-and-bone shop. This has a syrupy sweet feel to it with a touch of mystery. It rambled and meandered and bored me with too many characters, mediocre writing, a poor plot and nothing in it to keep my interest.
Rating: 2 Do NOT Recommend
