The Secrets of Ashmore Castle by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

My rating for The Secrets of Ashmore Castle by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles must be one of the strangest I gave: 4 stars, but I don’t recommend it and I will not read the next ones in the series. I will explain why after I talk about the plot.

The Earl of Stainton dies in a hunting accident in 1901 and his eldest son Giles inherits. He was away, with his studies of archaeology in Europe and northern Africa. He returns home to find out that his family has a lot of debts.
Kitty Bayfield, a rich heiress, is accompanied by her friend Nina, in her coming-out season. They meet, Giles falls in love with Nina, but he needs the money Kitty has.

I will avoid any spoilers, even if I am not recommending the book.

Giles falls in love with Nina after a few encounters, only talked a few times. This is shallow and unrealistic. It happened because, despite the 500+ pages this book has, there are sooooo many characters: Giles, Giles’ brother and 3 sisters and the ones they love/fancy and his mother and his grandmother and Kitty’s family and Nina’s aunt and the director of the school where Kitty and Nina have learned, and the staff and the family members of the staff. All are talked about at length, even if some of these could have easily been missed and made the book better. This is why I gave the book 4 stars.

What I didn’t realise, until after I read the book and read the plots and reviews for the other 3 books in the series [published now, there might be more in the future], is that the stories do not end. The second book in the series is again about the “love life” of Giles and Kitty and Nina and everybody else, and the same is repeated in book 3 and book 4. So, while I enjoyed the story enough to give 4 stars for 500 pages, I am not prepared to read 1500 pages more hoping that the romance will have an ending. This is why I don’t recommend this book or the series.

The Secrets of Ashmore Castle by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Details about the picture: –
My rating: 4/5 Stars
Would I recommend it: no
Published by: Sphere
Year it was published: 2022
Format: Hardcover
Genre(s): Romance
Pages: 512

About the author: Cynthia Harrod-Eagles was born on 13 August 1948 in Shepherd’s Bush, London, England, where was educated at Burlington School, a girls’ charity school founded in 1699, and at the University of Edinburgh and University College London, where she studied English, history and philosophy.
She had a variety of jobs in the commercial world, starting as a junior cashier at Woolworth’s and working her way down to Pensions Officer at the BBC.
She wrote her first novel while at university and in 1972 won the Young Writers’ Award with The Waiting Game. The birth of the MORLAND DYNASTY series enabled Cynthia Harrod-Eagles to become a full-time writer in 1979. The series was originally intended to comprise twelve volumes, but it has proved so popular that it has now been extended to thirty-four.
In 1993 she won the Romantic Novelists’ Association Romantic Novel of the Year Award with Emily, the third volume of her Kirov Saga, a trilogy set in nineteenth century russia.
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