Betty has lost her mind. I’m not sure that she was ever sane.

Of the opinion that everything and everyone in her life has always been against her, she resents those she calls the Beloveds, people that she feels have everything going their way and who are getting all the things that she deserves.

When things don’t go her way, everyone else is wrong for turning the world against her.

She resents her sister Gloria and her brother-in-law, her former boyfriend who was “stolen away” from her by Gloria. She resents the house they grew up in, Pipits, being left to Gloria and her husband. She resents her mom for leaving it to them instead of her.

I wonder though: did her mom realize just how off her rocker Betty was? Did she see mental instability rising up in one of her daughters?

Betty loves Pipits, and she believes the house talks to her and loves her back.

I loved the story, but I did not like the ending. There are things I desperately wanted to see happen, but they didn’t. It left me feeling that the story was incomplete. The author could be planning a sequel to this one though. If she is, I will be reading it.

I was sent a copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Looking for gothic? Looking for a mystery or interesting story? Two sisters, one less favored via for the possession of a house. Pipits is the name of the family mansion. Betty is in love with the place, but it gets left to her sister Gloria. Betty wants it, more than anything else. How far she will go to get what she wants is crazy, totally mental for sure! The ending was a tad of a letdown, but overall a read that would easily make a movie.

My copy came from Net Galley. My thoughts and opinions are my own. This review is left of my own free volition.

I tried a couple of times to get into this book but everytime I just could not get past the first chapter. I guess it just was not the book for me.

I could not get into this read. It just was not for me.

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This one started slowly for me - the main character merely an entitled, cold, stuck-up bitch. I resigned myself to a rather boring, emotionally-removed read.

And then, slowly, insidiously, the book and its wonderful writing took over.

This is an amazing study of psychopathy and its devolution into complete over-the-top madness.

Because it is told from the viewpoint of the spiraling psychopath, this book makes for a wild, uncomfortable ride.

And can I just say, I loved the relationship between Elizabeth and House? What a whack job!

This was a great story - I will look forward to Maureen Lindley's next book.

Actual rating: 4.5 stars.

The Beloveds by Maureen Lindley was a fantastic read. I enjoyed the book.

I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review.

I'm not going to go on too long but I didn't care for this book. I think I'm just too literal of a person to really have appreciated everything that went on in this book. I'm not saying you shouldn't try it yourselves I'm just saying I didn't like it myself. Betty's character was a whack job and really there was no closure and no resolution at all, she just keeps on being crazy and trying to kill her only remaining family. I just could not get into the character or the story line. Its well-reviewed on Amazon so don't let my thoughts discourage anyone!

This book sounded like it was going to be good...not so much. This book is all over the place, the writer is good but the story is just too bizarre
.

It is an amazing feat to write a book that people love even though they hate the twisted main character.

Look there can only be one "Rebecca". This book is in on way or shape at the level of "Rebecca" on it's best day. The main character is insane. She also does very terrible things and is never caught. The voice of the main character feels older than what the book setting is. At one point I thought the book started in the 1950s or something, but no it seems to be in modern settings. The ending left me unsatisfied. If you are going to have me follow the ramblings of a Mrs. Danvers character, at least let some sort of comeuppance occur.

"The Beloveds" is just a long and overly tedious book into the mind of a psychopath (our main character is named Betty) who is obsessed with her family home. When her mother dies and leaves the home to her sister and her husband (Gloria and Henry Bygone) Betty plans ways in which to get the house she rightfully sees as her inheritance.

There's nothing to Betty besides being cruel and petty. You would think that people would see another side to her, but based on what we are given to glimpse as a reader, she seems to be either drunk on gin and or taking pills most of the time. Considering her supposed weight (and the book mentions how very little she eats these days), how she wasn't passed out in all times is baffling to me. Betty is obviously supposed to be a stand-in for Mrs. Danvers. But for me, Mrs. Danvers wasn't obsessive about Manderley, she was obsessive about Rebecca and keeping Manderley the way that Rebecca wanted it.

The other characters are not developed very well. Probably because Betty takes no notice of them except to rage about her sister being seen as a Beloved, and other people as Beloved (they can do no wrong and are perfect). There are hints here and there that the character of Gloria is becoming suspicious of her sister, but that's all there are, hints. She seems just as clueless as other people in this book.

Telling the book via first person POV was just a mistake. As a reader you don't have the chance to get away from Betty. You read about the terrible things she does (there's a comment made that you find out she murdered the family's pet when she was a child) and then you just keep reading about things she is doing/planning with no hint about it from other people. I just felt mentally exhausted by the time I got to the end of this book.

The flow was not that great. We just stumble from one of Betty's schemes to another with her comments about how the house was talking to her and how her sister was a beloved and she didn't see why. Somehow we skip ahead months and years in this book with no reference for it except a quick word here and there said. Since I got an advance copy, hopefully the final book has some chapter headings with month/year included.

The setting of this book mainly takes place at the family house in the country somewhere, not close to London, but in the general area. Sorry if I sound vague, but the author didn't really describe things in a way for me to get a sense of where this was besides somewhere in England. The house also doesn't even come alive for me the way in which Manderley does for me as a reader while reading "Rebecca". I still don't even get why Betty is obsessed with a house that doesn't seem to be anything special.

The ending was a disappointment. The author just sets up that more bad things are coming. Why this is marketed as a mystery astounds me. There is no mystery here.

Because I sometimes struggle with writing several paragraphs about a book I didn't enjoy, this will be a trial run for my new list-style reviews! Hopefully this makes it easier to pick out what worked for me as a reader, as well as what didn't, without piling on to a book that could just be your new favorite. The Beloveds does indeed call to mind Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca—and it makes me dread what a slog it would have been to read that story from Mrs. Danvers' perspective.

LIKED: The choice of an unreliable, sociopath for the first-person narrator.

Elizabeth is such a compelling narrator at the start! Lindley perfectly captures her narcissism, bitterness, and lack of a sympathetic instinct towards others. Small moments of hypocrisy keep the reader grounded, reminding you that this thought pattern is neither normal nor healthy. For instance, her fury over the penchant of her new neighbors listening to music paired with indignation that complain about her loud pacing in the middle of the night. In Betty's mind the two are totally unrelated: she's exercising her basic rights as a tenant, while they're behaving like inconsiderate savages. Rather frightening stuff.

DISLIKED: How that personality turned monotonous and dull in the novel's middle section.

The Beloveds' greatest strength sadly became its downfall about a third of the way through. Elizabeth's plotting, when divorced from any action, turns into a droning series of repeated complaints. When one scheme to reclaim Pipits—the family home—fails and another doesn't soon materialize, Elizabeth is revealed to the reader as a monotone, raving lunatic. I don't require that a main character be likable for me to read their story, but I do expect them to be consistently engaging throughout a book. For a significant chunk of The Beloveds' middle, Elizabeth commits the one cardinal sin: she bored me. While the ending somewhat made up for this faux pas, I still had to slog through over 150 pages to reach it.

LIKED: A colorful writing style which helped keep the story interesting.

Because The Beloveds employs the first person perspective, this goes hand-in-hand with Betty's initial success as a character. Lindley possesses a real talent for crafting sentences; even as she writes a vile character with vile thoughts, she draws out the moldering beauty that her main character sees in the family estate. Betty's perspective may wind up prohibitively dark for some readers, but it also has a deliciously Gothic twist that calls genre classics to mind.

DISLIKED: Using an egotistical first-person narrator left the supporting characters underdeveloped.

Elizabeth doesn't see her sister, brother-in-law, or husband as people. She sees them only as obstacles: to Pipits, to happiness, to solitude. With that attitude these and other supporting characters inevitably sink into the mere outlines of people; it may ring true for Elizabeth's mental state, but does nothing to abate the monotony of her jealous rants. By the final third of the book I was craving a new perspective, just to learn if Elizabeth was as clever and free of suspicion as she herself believed.

The Beloveds lives and dies by its narrator, Elizabeth. Because of her unstable and deranged mental state, I think this novel would have functioned better as a short story or novella. At over 300 pages in length, there simply isn't enough plot to sustain such a toxic state of mind. Lindley's writing does take up some of the slack, and I would consider picking up another of her books. Yet while Elizabeth's single-mindedness was no doubt meant to chill and disturb the reader, when it transforms into a battering ram of negativity without relief, you start craving an escape.

In life, there are those who seem to have it all: good looks, charm, effortless style. The Fates smiled down on them from day one, any grade school test was easily aced, promotions are practically hand-delivered. To be a Beloved is to shine, to possess an uncanny ability to waltz through life unscathed. Elizabeth’s little sister, Gloria, epitomizes what it is to be a Beloved, from her golden ringlets as a child, to the way Elizabeth’s own boyfriend fell madly in love with Gloria at first sight. The one thing Elizabeth had going for her was her status as eldest child. She knew from the start that, when it came time for their ancestral home to fall to the next in line, Pipits would be hers and hers alone.

Unfortunately for Elizabeth, their mother had other ideas in mind and instead left the estate to Gloria and her doting husband Henry – it was as though their mother knew their family was growing. It wasn’t enough for Gloria to steal Elizabeth’s best friend Alice, Elizabeth’s sweetheart Henry. Now Gloria has Pipits (a house that she could never fully appreciate, unlike Elizabeth) and a baby on the way (a child who will be sure to be a Beloved too). Enraged, Elizabeth makes a silent vow then and there to avenge House, to take what’s rightfully hers – no matter what.

When I first heard of The Beloveds, I was ecstatic. It sounded like a book written just for me, from its Gothic vibe to a house at center stage. The moment my request was approved, I dove in, setting aside everything else to give this novel my undivided attention. …Sadly I don’t have many good things to say about this one.

I’m all for unlikable characters, even unlikable narrators, but Elizabeth was so thoroughly disturbed and jealous without a single redeemable quality. In the opening pages it’s mentioned how Elizabeth threw a kitten into a river, drowned the poor thing, all because it was Gloria’s pet. It’s all downhill from there. She’s married to a much older man in London where they run an art gallery together – yet she doesn’t love him, doesn’t even care about him. She decides to poison Henry with wild mushrooms. She spirals into alcoholism, loses her license to a drunk driving incident, takes up shoplifting, tries to get her neighbors evicted (and ultimately murders them). She even goes so far as to decide to kill herself and burn Pipits to the ground: if Elizabeth can’t have the house, no one can. (Although the house is destroyed, Henry’s pottery workshop was spared by mere inches; once as Beloved, always a Beloved.)

This woman in her 40s instead comes across as a child, forever jealous because her younger sister was the favorite and spends the rest of her life trying to make Gloria’s miserable. Because dialogue is few and far between, Elizabeth’s decent into madness is truly felt and experienced by the reader. She takes to seeing ceiling cracks that turn out to not exist, there’s a phantom dog who shows up at her house and starts following Elizabeth on her walks, she’s convinced Pipits speaks to her.

The Beloveds quickly went from an intriguing premise that held such potential to a novel that became a chore to read. By the end it felt as though the book itself was bored: suddenly there are timeskips, a month here, a few years there. All the while Elizabeth pouts over losing Pipits (even though she received jewelry, her mother’s surprising sizable fortune, more money plus an apartment in her divorce, and another home when Alice passes away).

The one thing The Beloveds had going for it was its atmosphere. There was a deliciously vintage, old-timey feel to the storytelling and I was convinced the book was set in the early/mid part of the 1900s. Imagine my surprise when packages from Amazon show up on Elizabeth’s doorstep!

The Beloveds was a novel I had such high hopes for and, disappointingly, my expectations were never met. As much as I love character explorations, Elizabeth’s nasty, whiny attitude completely turned me off from any enjoyment. This is an adult in her 40s who still harbors a grudge against her younger sister for being the favorite when they were children. She thinks nothing of lying, stealing, even murdering in her attempt to get back at Gloria. I wanted so much from this one and I’m left with the idea of what could have been.

Unsettling and mysterious, but it lacked an ending. The Beloveds by Maureen Lindley started out excellent, and unfortunately, just worked it’s way downward from there. Told in first person, from Betty’s unreliable perspective, The Beloveds is written beautifully. Hooking the reader from the beginning, it winds in and in towards what I assumed would be a thrilling ending.
The synopsis mentions a comparison to Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, and I think this is an accurate statement. Like Rebecca, there is an uneasy air to this, in which the reader brings their own fears and suspicions to the book, and I think each reader will read this and react to it a bit differently. Many of my suspicions and hunches in this book did not pan out, although I was right about a few surprises along the way.
As Betty plots her revenge against her sister, Gloria, and Gloria’s husband, Henry, the book gains momentum, but sadly that momentum never comes to a satisfying conclusion. About halfway through the book I started to get irritated with Betty and the repetitive “woe is me, everyone is out to get me, I’ll get my revenge”, etc etc etc routine. There is also a section towards the end, involving some neighbors in London that felt like an afterthought and didn’t fit in with Betty’s obsession with her childhood home that the rest of the book was about.
And now to that ending (or lack thereof) I mentioned above. I was so confused at the end, to the point that I thought my copy of the book was missing the last few pages. I usually enjoy an ambiguous ending, but I really didn’t get it here and I felt unsatisfied and irritated when I finished the book. So, what started off as an excellent read turned into an annoying one at the end. Which is really frustrating! But, if you enjoy atmospheric, eerie reads that require a bit of thought and contemplation and you don’t mind an unreliable narrator or ambiguous endings, you may really enjoy this book! Usually those items are things I love in a book, but here it didn’t quite work for me.
Bottom Line: Mysterious and captivating, but the ending disappointed me.

Betty adores only one thing in her life: her childhood home, called Pipits, and desires nothing else than to live in it. Alone. So when her mother passes away and wills the home to her younger sister Gloria and her husband, Henry, Betty is beyond angry and ruined. She puts Henry and Gloria in a class called the Beloveds; people she deems loved and admired and lucky in love and everything they do. Betty, of course, is on the outside looking in on these Beloved sort. She vows she will do whatever it takes to get Pipits back, at any cost.

This novel features Betty talking to us directly in a conversational style, which I liked. However, sadly, the rest of this one didn't work too well for me. For one thing, it's just maddeningly slow. There is so much talk from Betty and she is so mean, crazy, and cruel. Halfway through the novel, I felt as if nothing had happened, other than her rantings. Beyond her being mentally ill, the whole book is built on her obsession for this house, and it became a bit much for me. I understand that it should be creepy, but it just didn't work for me.

For much of the novel, Betty isn't really even that good at being evil, she's just mean-spirited and a ranting drunk. I kept reading out of a morbid curiosity, but I really wasn't all that interested or engaged or drawn to anyone in the novel. In fact, I just despised Betty completely and couldn't even find myself liking her as a "bad guy." She was just mean. Also, again, I felt somewhat bad despising someone who was so clearly mentally ill, but she was so hateful, and her obsession with this house was just all-consuming and hard to empathize with.

Overall, this one didn't work for me. It was so slow, with such a despicable main character with odd motivations. However, I've read a lot of reviews where others really enjoyed its creepy nature, so it may work for you.

4 troubling stars

For many of us, we hold onto something in our lives. It can be a memory, a trinket, a place where or memories and our lives seem to be tied together. It can be a room we once lived in, a forest we once played in, or even a house we lived in. For most of us this memory holds us for a small bit of time. For Elizabeth this memory consumes her. You see what Elizabeth most holds dear, what she loves the most is her childhood home. It is hers body and soul, she loves it, desires it, and speaks to it as it speaks to her.

However, the unspeakable happens and when her mother dies the house is bequeathed to her sister, Gloria. Gloria is a beloved. She has everything beauty, intelligence, and most seriously of all, a husband who Betty fashioned herself to have. Betty has lost what is rightfully hers and sets out on a very determined and sinister road to get what she wants back. She plans, she initiates a deranged pathway to her ultimate goal and shows that she has not a normal bone in her body. She is consumed by rage, by her hatred of all the beloveds, most especially her sister, because Betty is not and never will be one of them. She is the ultimate subject of what makes for a psychopath, a cunning, intelligent, maneuvering woman who feels not a single ounce of regret or sorrow for what she has done.

This book was enticing as we wonder if Betty will ever face a reckoning for acts of depravity and malice. Maureen Lindley has written a book that weaves the story well and makes one realize that often horrible things are hidden inside one's persona.

Thanks are extended to Maureen Lindley, Gallery Books, and NetGalley for providing an adanced copy of this novel.

Betty has grown up in the shadow of her little sister Gloria. She decides at an early age that her sister is a "beloved"; one of those lucky people who has everything good come into their lives without effort. Gloria received the most of their mother's love and attention and then when Betty brings home a potential boyfriend named Henry, he falls under the spell of her youngest sister also.
Betty's one comfort is the family home called Pipits, after the birds that lived in the meadows surrounding the estate. As the oldest child, Betty fully expects that the home will be left to her after the unexpected passing of their mother.
Surprisingly, their mother leaves her vast wealth to Betty, but Pipits is willed to Gloria and her husband Henry for their growing family. Filled with rage, Betty hides her anger and resentment while secretly plotting to keep Pipits for herself.
This gothic tale is a slow burn as we watch Betty's carefully constructed life crumble with the loss of what she considers her rightful inheritance,

This is one of the most disappointing books I've read in a really long time. That may seem like hyperbole, but I really mean it. It's not that the book is bad. It's that the book is so good, and the ending is so bad. The ending is so bad that proportionately, this is one of the most disappointing books I've read in a really long time.

While reading, I tend to mentally take notes of things I want to say in the review. And I had so much to say about this while making my way through it. I was writing the hell out of this review. And I hit the ending, and nothing I'd been saying was worth saying anymore, because the ending is just. that. bad.

This book has such a great slow burn. Our main character, Elizabeth/Betty/Lizzie, is batshit crazy. She's desperately in love. Obsessively in love. So in love she would rather die than give up her one true love.

Her childhood home.

Literally.

Standing in the way of true love's path is her sister, Gloria. When their mother died, she committed the ultimate betrayal, leaving House to her younger sister, rather than its rightful owner. Only Elizabeth knows what House wants. House only speaks to Elizabeth. She'll do anything to right this travesty.

But that god.damn. ending.

Elizabeth is a complete sociopath. And this book reads like it's set in the 1800's, so it is very jarring when someone answers their cell phone. That really adds to the tone, though, because House is very old, and Elizabeth is very, erm, attached to it. Her speech patterns and mannerisms are very in keeping with that. I wish we'd had a bigger separation of her way of speech vs Gloria's, it would've made the old timey wimey atmosphere work better.

There is no ending here. We get this fantastic slow burn and it literally just ffffft, sizzles out. End. Fine.

No. Just no. What a waste of an incredible build up. I am so disappointed, I don't want to even remember I read this.

There's an expression that my grandmother used to say about people who thought a bit too much of themselves - 'I'd like to buy them for what they're worth and sell them for what they think they're worth.' That came to mind several times while reading The Beloveds. This story is told from the perspective of Betty Stash, one of the most unlikable characters I've come across in some time. Now, given that she's the antagonist of this tale, that's to be expected. Betty is unhinged at best with her obsession over her childhood home - a house that speaks to her no less. I could get behind the crazy obsession and even Betty's frustration over her sister inheriting the house, but for a story that was supposed to be about sibling rivalry, I really didn't see much of that here. Don't get me wrong, Betty definitely doesn't like her sister, but the thing is she doesn't like anybody, including her own husband, so it's more like a rivalry with everyone. She does have her sinister side, complete with plans to get what she wants. All of this could've made for a thrilling read, including when Betty's plans backfire on her. Unfortunately, this one lacked that edge of your seat feeling that should come with a thriller. Instead, Betty comes across as whiny and pathetic most of the time, and that whining went on and on for the majority of the story. Her self-entitled, that should be mine attitude and the incessant poor pitiful me theme wore thin pretty quickly and made for a story that felt much too long. There are a handful of moments when the tension ramped up, but they were just too few and far between to make up for the tedium of the rest of the book. The author clearly has talent, and the premise was good. In fact, this could've made for an excellent short story, but as it stands, I found myself wanting to skim more often than not and it was much too easy to set it aside for later.

The Beloveds by Maureen Lindley is going into my oh my gosh what did I just read pile of books. When finished with this one I felt a bit like I needed to go wash my eyes or perhaps even my brain clean from reading this one and going so far into the mind of such a disturbed character.

Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Stash is the narrator of The Beloveds and readers will quickly learn that Betty isn’t exactly a likable and cuddly narrator, You see Betty began her jealousy in childhood believing that when her sister, Gloria, was born that Gloria was a “beloved”. Beloveds are those who get anything in life they want and luck follows them around like a shadow.

Without knowing it Gloria seemed to come into Betty’s life and steal the love of their mother becoming the golden child. Then as time went on Gloria’s stole Betty’s friend Alice away and then Gloria set her sights on Henry, the man that was supposed to be Betty’s love.

Betty had moved away and married but when the death of her mother came she returned to claim the family home that she thought was rightly hers but even after her passing Betty’s mother rewards the “beloved” sister Gloria with the deed to the family home. This is what sets into motion Betty’s plan for revenge and reclaiming what she believes is truly hers.

Picking up this book and beginning to read is like diving into a very dark and disturbing mind of a psychopath. The world from Betty’s eyes is one that is completely out to get her and she will go to extreme lengths to change that. It honestly took me a bit to settle in since Betty wasn’t very likable but eventually the pages started flying by waiting to see how far it would all go. At the end I’m not sure I was a huge fan of the last little twist there either as I was kind of expecting more leaving me to rate this one at 3.5 stars.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

This book had me at page 1. Is this Betty Stash obsessed or what? Sibling rivalry at it's best. After their mom gives the house to the younger sister Gloria, the fireworks start. Clearly Betty is losing her reality on life and even gets extreme in trying to ruin peoples lives all around her. Yet to her she does nothing wrong. She gets psychotic in many parts of the book. My favorite is the harassment between her neighbors downstairs in her apartment complex. Betty needs a job, something to keep her mind off everything around her but I don't think I would want to work around her. Betty wants everything that was not hers, including her sisters husband, their house, their life. If she doesn't get her way she made your life miserable but acted innocent.

I loved this book till the end and then it abruptly ended, another novel perhaps?

Well anyway, I like the cast (mostly felt sorry for them), the plot has an eerie feel to it. I also like how the Author put her words together, great story writing. I would read more by this author.



Thank you Net Gallery, Threshold and Pocket Books for me to review.

Cherie'