the brilliant house

I loved this book since the first page amazing couldn't stop listening, absolutely brilliant just brilliant. the story was so good loved the narration she was the best what a great book t

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Great read.

Good to the end & keeps you guessing to the end. Enjoyable with some good twists.

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Great writing but a little far fetched

I was undecided about a rating for this one. I'd say probably 3.5*. I did enjoy reading it. The setting of an old house with secret rooms and passages in the middle of nowhere in a violent storm is definitely a winner. The writing is excellent and Ms Frost did a great job in building the suspense, but in the end I felt it was all just a bit too far fetched.

I enjoyed the narration by Gloria Sanders.

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brilliant

absolutely brilliant ,so many twists and turns couldn't stop listening to it , never knowing how the killing is until the end

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Superb narration!

I was a little worried when I saw the low ratings, but took a chance and I'm so pleased I did! A really good mystery story (a psycho-thriller version of an Agatha Christie novel) - keeps you guessing. I would definitely recommend. And the narrator did an excellent job!

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Great Writing, Super Narration - Far Fetched Plot

Can you believe someone would change the name of their house to "The Guest House"?
Not the Fallon Guest House ... not the Village Guest House ... not the Blue Bell Guesthouse ... not the Preserving The Past Guesthouse and not even the Dunromin Guesthouse .... well here is a simple guide to this well written but completely unbelievably plotted book.
If you CAN believe someone renames their house "The Guest House" well then you may be able to suspend disbelief for the rest of this pacey whodunnit homage to "Ten Little" by Agatha Christie.

I am afraid to say, despite the excellent and often amusing narration by Gloria Sanders, this promising murder mystery fell apart so fast I gave up when it just became impossible to take seriously anymore. It is such a shame as it really was so well written and Abbie Frost has a great talent for building suspense, creating atmosphere and describing settings so well you would think you were there - the tragedy is that despite this wonderful storytelling it was a story which simply did not deserve to be told.

Firstly it was rather a hastily tacked together patchwork of favourite fiction genres which gave a Frankenstein sort of feel to it.

Firstly the independent backstory of the main character which has the very modern theme of social media and then segues into AirB&B style territory - so a very up to the minute setting.

Seven "Little" Guests, One Killer - A Holiday to Remember ............... and an unapologetically switch to Agatha Christie's famous whodunnit. Luckily this ties in very well with the modern setting, AirB&B style setup complete with keypads so the host can remain elusive without the use of servants as in the original.

So far ...... it's all looking good. The other diverse guests arrive. Sadly the narrator then takes the "Miss Jean Brodie" accent mentioned a little to literally and it becomes a little harder to take seriously especially as it is at times the accent becomes a comedy version of the original. But I was determined to like it and continued.

Then in the flashbacks, set in Co Mayo between the years 2000 and 2015 - give or take - we enter historical fiction and begin to lean heavily on the fabulous Daphne Du Maurier and Charlotte Bronte. Oh yes, because despite a later mention of the Irish Property Boom which was from 1991 to 2001 this is more like olde worlde Oirland around the time of the famine ... which is also mentioned .... um the famine years were 1845 – 1849.

Of course Irish people will never forget the famine but if you hear a child crying in say the years 2000 onwards it is rather hard to believe any local hearing it is put in mind on the starving children's voices on the wind during the famine some 155 years ago.

But never mind that! I was even willing to go along with the hundred year or more time shift into the past, a house rename "The Guest House" and even the expectations of the guests that the "Cloud B&B" they had been booked would be stocked with plenty of booze ..... but the fact there was no way to reach the house except by a very long hike .... and the way weather became so bad it was impossible to retrace their steps is just difficult to get onboard for.

For starters there is an oil fuelled stove and heating ...... forget about the postman, electricity meter reader, wifi installer and even transporting groceries but a house which can only be accessed by foot could not survive for long - presuming it had access when it was built and furnished as otherwise it would not exist.

Never mind about that though as still on the "Far and Away" historical Ireland setting we hear more of the rich history of the house and meet an old almost indentured servant/serf style gardener and mysteries abound.

Then the feisty main character, who I have to say is super adventurous and courageous becomes a sort of James Bond character. As this person was going through a very tough time in a back story and seemed to have a serious drink problem it is really wonderful how they rallied.

This soon leads to a sort of "Sliver" style subplot and the bodycount starts to rise, but this does not put of our hero who ploughs on while also going through a terrifying psychological event as many terrible repressed memories surface, but gamely they still carry on.

It was the next major reveal that finished me off when it all became completely ridiculous - and again just very like another film genre I will not name as do not want to spoil it for anyone tempted to read it.

After this - when the plot set sail once again for the traditional Victorian Gothic I just gave up.

In fairness if it had not been so well written and narrated (with the exception of the over the top comedy Miss Jean Brodie character) I would have switched off a LOT sooner. I suppose it also had something for everyone in its widely ranging genres including time travel - or perhaps parallel universes where modern day Ireland is still mithering through the 1800s.
Compared to what we were asked to believe with the main plot though this becomes an trifling detail in a bewildering infinity of implausibility

My main gripe is that the tired trope of a characterless animal was clumsily introduced so it could be mysteriously murdered for absolutely no reason whatsoever later on. As nobody ever seemed to be bothered feeding it during the story or wondering who was looking after it, I suppose it was only a matter of time before it starved to death. In a book which seemed to borrow very heavily from many well known inspirations it really could have done without slinging another careworn cliche in the mix too - as from someone who can write so well it was just plain lazy.

In general the storytelling really was compelling. intriguing and engaging but the plot just beggared all belief. I will look out for Abbie Frost and Gloria Sanders again as they both are very gifted but a shame the plot was not worthy of either of their talents.

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5 people found this helpful

Highly Recommended

Atmospheric and with an overly sentimental ending for such a tragic story. The sense of the man's evil is tangible, usually only hinted at under the surface in many books and then the passively accepting wives, who knows why. Narration was great except for that of the killer at the end, which I found a little sing-songy. I did wonder though if he would surface towards the end. Overall, a great read.

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fantastic read

absolutely gripping highly recommended. can't wait to see more books by this author. best I've listened to in a while

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Disappointing

Not a particularly good story and not well executed. The narrator of the male characters was poor and detracted from what could have been a macabre atmosphere. Would not recommend

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Fantastic performance of an abysmal plot

Such a baffling novel. Abbie Frost can clearly write; on a technical level this book is solid. But the plot is so nonsensical, with twist after ridiculous twist being thrown. Characters and motivations change on a dime with no continuity, telling lies seemingly for the sake of tricking only the reader and not each other. Characters conveniently remember massive life events that change the plot direction exactly when required. One character appears to shift from a 9/10 year old girl to a 16/17 year old girl over the course of a chapter and I still can't tell if she was a horribly written teenager, or an incredibly precocious preteen. By the final third, the plot had become so far fetched as to be utterly boring because of the way any old twist is thrown in every five minutes. I'm willing to suspend disbelief by quite a way, but when the story is so transparently designed to be constantly shocking without any coherence or logic, it's extremely hard to care. Absolutely baffled how a major publishing house like HarperCollins put something like this out. It feels like an editor didn't even read it over after it was done to check for continuity errors or plot holes. Piling on twist after twist for the sake of adding twists does not make for a good story. And it's a shame, because Gloria Sanders' performance is fantastic, and Abbie Frost clearly has a way with words. The book feels like it was meddled with and changed to try making it more 'high octane' or something, but the first half wasn't rewritten to match the style. Perhaps this isn't correct, but it feels like a book that was tweaked and pulled further and further away from the author's original vision, by people who favor striking plot beats over a coherent overall plot. Completely unsatisfying, and I was left feeling like I'd wasted 9 hours of my time.

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1 person found this helpful