Summerbook #5: The Curse of the Montrolfes

 I've been pretty lax about posting, but I do have books!  It's been a busy summer so far, even if much of the activity has been sewing.  I also spent a week in Seattle, visiting my sister with my mom.  My sister has exciting plans to move back down here and start a small business of her own, as she is desperate to escape the tech world.  While we were there, an awful tragedy hit our own branch library; you may have heard about the young guy who decided to stage a mass shooting at the Chico public library.  He killed two men, and I'm grateful for the quick response from my friends the library staff who herded families to safety, and for the fact that the kid wasn't very good at what he wanted to do, and the fast police response.  The perpetrator probably didn't imagine an aftermath, but now he faces a lifetime in prison.  Our town has rallied around the families and the library.  It was horrifying, and now our library is closed; they were going to shut down in August for a year-long renovation project anyway, so they just closed it early.

With all that said, I guess I should talk about a book now.  Feels strange after all that.  But here we go.

The Curse of the Montrolfes, by Rohan O'Grady

I enjoyed Rohan O'Grady's Let's Kill Uncle very much some years ago, so when the donation table brought us this gem, I was happy.  And there are lots of Gorey illustrations, even better!  This is a Gothic novel, and kind of over-the-top and weird in the same way that Let's Kill Uncle was.  O'Grady is a very fun author, and I'll have to find more of her works!

So, the last of the Montrolfes, a nephew, returns from Canada to inherit the neglected family manor.  He's always been a solitary scholar, but doesn't know much family history.  An ancient retainer tells him about the first Montrolfe 200 years ago, and the whole line since -- a haunted, melancholy heritage, in the literal sense.  John himself is soon haunted in dreams by a beautiful girl who beckons him along every night, until she disappears.  In despair, he searches the part of the house where he first saw her, and finds a diary, written by teenaged Catherine Barton long ago.  Her story will unlock the mystery of what curse lies upon the Montrolfes, and a very exciting story it is too.

This is an old-fashioned Gothic thriller mystery, but it's not generic, and it's a ton of ...well, I'm not sure 'fun' is the word, but I didn't want to put it down and I enjoyed it a lot!