I really wanted to like this because the premise is fascinating: the life of Mary Seymour interspersed with the life of a woman, Alison, who spent time with Mary, briefly, at Wolf Hall before mysteriously vanishing.

Alison, as established from early on, has somehow found her way to the present m, where she lives a successful but lonely life, desperate to find out what happened to her illegitimate son, Arthur, who' was sent away to be fostered as soon as he was born. Mary and Alison aren't friendly, but Mary agrees to help Alison.

The story alternates between Mary's short, grim life (and paranormal abilities, because of course) and Alison's semifufiiled life in the present, with a good job, an a romantic entanglement with Adam, a man she met shortly after she arrived in the present, had feelings for, and dumped because she wanted to find her son. And, of course, was afraid of her own feelings.

Naturally, she crosses paths with Adam again, and he's a famous historian who has just found a painting of Anne Boleyn that's really a painting of Mary Seymour. And there are clues in the painting about where Arthur was sent, as Mary promised

As Alison attempts to figure out the clues she reconnects with her therapist Diana, the only therapist in possibly the whole world who has ever counseled time travellers before, and gets close with Adam again as he accepts what she's told him about the painting and wants to help her.

Meanwhile poor Mary's life just gets worse, with her only comfort being someone she's always had a telepathic connection with. As she foisted on the Fenner family, she suffers, imagines she's in love with the villainous Will Fenner, and eventually falls for his illegitimate half brother, Thomas, who she (of course) shares the telepathic connection with.

Thomas wants to help Mary and by extension, Alison, and so he agrees to go and find out more information. He also travels to future (because of course he can) though it's not the present day but the English Civil War.

While he's gone Will and his mother, for some reason decide to kill Mary.

Alison and Adam, meanwhile, get back together, Alison has a meeting with the ghost of Diana, finds out that Adam's relative is also a time traveler who met Thomas and feels regret that he could have prevented Mary's murder.

Alison and Adam find the grave of Alison's son, who lived an exemplarly astonishing life, took his mother name, and left an intact grave for her to visit. And, with the help of Adam's time traveling relation, they are able to free Mary's spirit to be with Thomas.

Oh, and Adam is totally on board with Alison's time traveling, accepting it as soon as she confesses without hesitation. Presumably they live happily ever after now they know thanks to Mary and the portrait and Adam's time traveling relation, that all is well.

Mary's still dead but, you know, happier

Tldr: A modern/historical/paranormal/time travel/romance that's so stuffed with things that the characters are pieces moved about and with increasingly eye rolling "connections" (the only therapist who has ever seen time travellers! and she's cool with it! but dying! but don't worry she also appears as a spirit!) that are forced beyond belief. Great idea muddled with too much stuff.

The Phantom Tree by Nicola Cornick is dual timeline novel set in both the modern age and the Tudor Era, specifically the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Fans of both Susanna Kearsley and Philippa Gregory will enjoy this novel, because it has a similar feel to their book, particularly Gregory’s The Lady of the Rivers and Kearsley’s The Rose Garden. The Phantom Tree is told from the point of view of two women, Alison in the present and Mary in the past. Both are women who do their best to try to survive the terrible circumstances they find themselves enduring in their lives.

I am a huge fan of dual timeline novels, so this book was made specifically to delight me. I also loved the magical elements, which included Mary’s special abilities to see the future and communicate telepathically with another person. The novel also included some romance, though I wouldn’t call this strictly a romance novel, but it is a prominent part of the story. The book also includes enough of a mystery element that it kept me reading and interested. This was one of those books that I read within a few days and was up at 1AM reading a couple of nights in a row.

I don’t want to say too much about the plot, because it is best to just watch the story unfold. I will say that it isn’t a perfect story, and there are a few choices the author made that don’t quite make sense. Certain plot points are not completely explained or developed as fully as they should have been. But, I thought the story was good enough for me to overlook those things to just enjoy the story. The author did a great job in giving the novel a sense of place, so that I could really “see” the story unfolding. While reading it, I felt like I was present in the places where the story is set, though one no longer exists and the another is fictional.

I was given a free copy of this story by Netgalley in exchange for my honest review, but I plan to look for more books like this by this author.

If you're not a fan of the whole time-travel storyline, this book might not be for you. I can appreciate it when the specifics of said time-travel aren't overindulged and it just is what it is, which is the case here. That issue aside, there are still several aspects of The Phantom Tree that didn't make this book a fulfilling read by the last page.

The book switches between two characters and two different periods of time. Both were interesting and carried their stories well, but it took SO long for their stories to solidify into something that was interesting and grabbed my attention. I really had to push myself to get through the first third of the book. It was just SO. SLOW. There was a lot of filler and I wish there had been less of that and more actual substance, especially toward the end.

But then the pacing picked up and I could see where the author was trying to go with the plot. Both characters became more dimensional and I really liked their growth and the complexity of the choices they made.

All in all, it wasn't a bad book. I wish several things would have been better explained and I wasn't a huge fan of the ending. The Cat and Darrell storyline wasn't hashed out as much as I wished it was. The Richard storyline was sort of just there. I guess I wanted more definitive lives and endings for the characters by the end of the book, but at almost 400 pages, I was ready for it to be over.

The Phantom Tree blends history, a lesser known Seymour and a dollop of supernatural to make for a unique reading experience. The story focuses on two women, in two different eras - Allison Bannister in modern day and Mary Seymour, a young woman in Tudor England who has connections to the Crown.

I appreciated that this book wasn't heavy in British history as some Tudor Historical Fiction. I also enjoyed the descriptions of 16th century England but overall, The Phantom Tree fell somewhere in the 'I enjoyed the read, but it's not a fav' realm for me.

I think the biggest issue I had with the book is that the reader isn't given any real explanation to account for the supernatural and time travel elements which were a big part of the overall plot. No standing stones, no magic jewels, no magical cupboard to Narnia etc. I can suspend belief, but I need the issue to be addressed. When you add in the clairvoyance/telepathy aspect, it made for a rather substantial supernatural focus in this Historical Fiction read.

I appreciated that Mary and Allison's story line are balanced well within the plot, but I was much more drawn to Mary's story. Allison's experiences in modern times felt forced. It bothered me how easily Allison was able to blend in to the 21st century and how readily the people around her accepted her tales of time travel. I guess I expected more 'fish out of water' drama.

Overall, this is an entertaining read that gives readers a unique supernatural element to the popular Historical Fiction genre. If readers are able to suspend belief and go with the flow, they should enjoy this novel that blends history, supernatural, a bit of mystery and even some romance for good measure.

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to the publisher for my complimentary digital copy of this book, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

Absorbing, heartwarming, and incredibly intriguing!

The Phantom Tree is a well-paced, evocative, time-travel novel set in England during both the mid-1500s as well as present day and is told from two different perspectives, Alison Banestre, a strong, heartbroken, young lady running from scandal, and Alison Bannister, a successful, driven, young woman searching for a way home.

The writing is effortless and immersive. The characters are multifaceted, tormented, and sympathetic. And the plot using a back-and-forth, past/present style captivates and enthralls as it sweeps you away into an intricately woven, suspenseful tale of life, loss, familial responsibility, coming-of-age, betrayal, deception, drama, mystery, love, and a touch of magic.

The Phantom Tree is a beautifully written, clever, unique story, and even though there is not much known about the life and death of Mary Seymour, Cornick has done a remarkable job of taking the barest of historical facts and surrounding them with fiction that is passionate, alluring, and exceptionally fascinating.

I have mixed feelings about this book. There were aspects I enjoyed and bits that did not quite work for me.

I liked the main characters and I did connect to both Alison and Mary quite well in the end. I enjoyed the side characters as well, especially Richard. I liked the way the author organised the chapters between Mary and Alison. Seeing Alison looking back and Mary living events was very interesting.

I should have liked the time travelling aspect and it was interesting, but somehow I never quite believed it. The details how the character’s life in the present was established were too vague for my questioning mind and it bugged me.

I wonder whether I would have liked this story a bit more if it had had a slightly darker tone to it. Although some horrible things happen in it, the atmosphere never quite matches it.

I struggled with the first quarter/third of the book. I was not sure whether I was going to like it. In the end I did and I flew through the last half. It was a good enough read, but it simply never felt quite real to me. It was just average for me unfortunately. Having said all that, I did like the ending and if you like historical fiction you may well enjoy this book. And just maybe you will love it.

Alison Bannister and Mary Seymour are enemies now separated by hundreds of years. However, when Alison finds a portrait of Mary, she knows that Mary left her clues to solving multiple mysteries Alison has spent ten years trying to solve.

Mary is the daughter or a queen but, after the death of her parents, she is sent to live at Wolf Hall to live with other orphaned children on the Seymour family tree. It is here she meets Alison, who instantly dislikes Mary, but when things go from bad to worse for both of the girls, the two make a pact and Alison finds a way to get them both out of Wolf Hall.

The story is set in two different times - Mary in the 1500's and Alison trapped in the present - but both timelines flowed and both were written in a compelling way. The mystery element of the novel was intriguing and the little hints of science fiction weaved in through the time jumping made the story all the more interesting. There were a few little issues I had, though they were mostly personal reasons. There were a few lines that had me rolling my eyes (for example, I am so over people letting out the breath they did not realise they were holding) and there were specific characters whose actions disgusted me. With the exception of those minor complaints, I thought it was a great read with.

I would say this a 4.5-star book because it was a really enjoyable read, there were just a few elements of the story I personally did not enjoy.

Wow, this book pulls you in from the first page. I love historical fiction with multiple time lines and a mystery to solve. Nicola Cornick is one of my favorite authors. Great characters and I felt immersed in the time period. Could not put this one down. Highly recommend and 5 stars.

Totally enraptured by this story! While there are true characters and events in this book, Nicola Cornick has mostly taken the absence of history about Mary Seymour and filled in her story, along with that of fictional Allison Bannister. Allison is a time traveller who is trapped in modern England, desperately trying to get back to Tudor times to find out what became of her son. Yes, time traveller, and the mechanics of time travel are not really at issue in this book- which as one who doesn't do science fiction was something I appreciated (there will have to be some suspension of disbelief here). It's an emotional story as both Mary and Allison were children and young women that had to fight for notice and survival at the hands of disinterested relatives, and both clamoured for love where they could find it. I couldn't decide whether to root for Allison to find a way back to the past to find her son, or to hope she'd find reason to stay in the modern world (as life in Tudor England for a single woman would not have been easy). First book I've read by the author- not the last!

Pretty much any book description that includes history and time travel is going to, at the very least, capture my interest. The description for Nicola Cornick’s upcoming novel, The Phantom Tree, did just that. Once I get past the description and start reading, I need there to be both compelling characters and a compelling story (the characters being just a little more important of the two). Once again, The Phantom Tree delivered and in some pretty big and surprising ways.

At first glance, Alison Bannister seems like many other modern women with careers and commitment issues. But when she stumbles across a Tudor-era portrait in a shop window, her past comes crashing back into her present in more than one way. Originally from the sixteenth century, Alison became trapped but has been searching for clues to a way back to the son she left behind—clues she hopes the portrait’s subject, Mary Seymour, left for her to find. Mary’s face isn’t the only one from her past she sees in the shop that day, however. Her ex, Adam (now a famous historian), is also there having discovered the painting and declared it to be of Anne Boleyn. Alison needs Adam’s help to get the answers she needs, and for her son, she is willing to brave the demons of her past in two centuries.
The narrative approach to the different threads of plot and their respective timelines worked beautifully for me. While Alison is certainly the narrative focus for the novel’s overall plot, the chapters in her perspective (both in her past and in her present) are presented in the third person while Mary’s chapters are all in the first person. The decision strikes an intriguing balance, bringing the plotline set further in the past closer to the reader in many ways than the plotline happening in the more familiar present. While Alison is the time traveler, Mary has supernatural abilities of her own that carry more weight thanks to the reader’s first-hand accounting of them. The first-person narration also protects some significant reveals from later in the book.

Themes of family (particularly mother-son relationships), second chances, and trust weave together to support a plot that blends speculation and the supernatural. Mixing fantasy elements (like time travel) with a real-world setting can easily slip to the ridiculous side of things, but The Phantom Tree manages to avoid this in many places because of the novel’s emotional, thematic underpinnings. Its perspective on both history and women is thought provoking too, for instance, seeing how women’s erasure from the historic record in favor of the men who wrote it can mean granting men credit for the evil deeds of women as well as their lauded achievements.

The promises of the premise pay off beautifully in the story’s final chapters, delivering a conclusion that is almost certainly not what many readers would have hoped for or expected, but is nonetheless satisfying—perhaps more so for being practical and realistic without losing the hopeful spark at the heart of the story. I suppose that is the final element I look for in a good book—a bittersweetness that makes the fantastic resonate within the realm of relatable reality.

The Phantom Tree will be available on August 21, 2018.

Haunting and delicious read. I love time travel and romance, but I haven’t read Cornick in the last few years. I can see I’m going to have to fix that.

It took me a little bit of reading to really get into this book, because it made 0 sense to me in the beginning, but I promise tou this book is well worth the read. I loved every page! My heart broke with Mary, and I cried with Allison in that chapel.

The Phantom Tree by Nicola Cornick was a fun read that took a real figure in history who disappeared and built a fictional “what if” story around her incorporating time travel, historical fiction, mystery and romance.

What figure? Mary Seymour who was the daughter of one of Henry the Eighth’s wives—Katherine Parr—who actually outlived him to marry again and have a child. (She was wife number six who was widowed when King Henry died and she married Thomas Seymour after his death.). ( By the way, if you get curious and look her up Katherine ‘s name is spelled with a “C” in some notable reference books as well as a “K”.)

To quote the author at the end of the book:
“The story of Mary Seymour is shrouded in mystery. She was born on 30 August 1548. She disappeared from the historical record in 1550, which has led to much speculation about her life—and death. In The Phantom Tree, I take the known facts of Mary’s life and weave them into a broader framework of the history of the Seymour family.”

Mary’s father—Thomas Seymour—was actually Katherine Parr’s fourth husband!. In the context of the times, Katherine was unusually old to be giving birth to her first child and predictably she died shortly after bringing Mary into the world. Less than a year later, her widower was dead too, losing his head on the block after attempting to lead a rebellion involving Henry VIII ‘s daughter the Lady Elizabeth. Mary drops out of the historical record shortly afterwards and is generally assumed to have perished in infancy. But what if she didn’t? This book takes that ball and runs with it.

As many historical fiction books do, the author did a good job at getting the setting and details of the 1500s very accurately portrayed. From that point on, the totally fictional part of the book was great escape reading.

The novel opens in the present day, with another main character, Alison Bannister, recognizing a 14th century portrait in the window of a Wiltshire art gallery as Mary. Seymour. In the twenty-first century, the painting has been newly authenticated as being one of Anne Boleyn, but Alison knows better. She knew Mary personally – they shared a room while they were growing up. Alison is actually Alison Banestre, a fellow orphan and Seymour relative, and she struck a bargain with Mary back in the 1500s. Alison would help Mary escape from Wolf Hall, the place where they had grown up, and Mary would find a way to leave Alison word of what had become of her illegitimate son, the baby snatched from her not long after he was born. Alison and the authenticator of the painting, Adam, a noted historian and maker of documentaries, end up solving a mystery about what happened to Mary, and to Alison’s son, Arthur.

Was this book great literary fiction? No. Was it well done time travel fiction? Yes! It was an enjoyable read, and I learned about some real figures in British history that I hadn’t know much about from a fascinating era of British history. I highly recommend this book if you are at all intrigued by by review.

Thank you Graydon House Publishing and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book and for allowing me to review it.

I loved this premise so I had to give this books a try.


Now, the story follows Mary and Allison who were roommates and distant relatives at Wolf Hall. Mary is the daughter of the late Queen Catherine and Allison is pretty much a nobody. A distant relative of the Seymour clan. Things happen and Allison finds her way into the future and has a big mystery on her hands that only Mary, in the past, can help with.


I liked both Mary and Allison. I’m glad they started out hating each other, but then becoming friends…of sorts. They are those typical frenemies if you will. They give each other a hard time because they are so different, but they are really truly the same at the same time. It really made their relationship special. I will have to say, I did like Allison’s POV the best. I might be biased since she was in the present, but we got to see her past POV as well. Her’s was the most interesting and the one I really wanted to understand. Mary was okay too but it took a long time for things to start getting interesting.


The fantasy aspect was done well here. I was worried, but it worked well. There were sometimes I was confused, but it worked out well.


My only complaint about this book was the ending. I had to re-read it a couple of times, especially Mary’s part there. I am still not 100% sure what happened to Mary at the end there. I THINK I know what happened, but do I? Not sure. Maybe someone to explain it to me. I feel dumb.

Anyways….


I really did enjoy the story, the characters, and the mystery. I actually teared up when the big reveal occurred. It was of joy and sorrow. The author did an amazing job with this. I was pleased.


In the end, I liked this story a lot. The ending for Mary left me scratching my head even now and I read that a couple of times. If you like historical fictions mixed with some fantasy/paranormal, I recommend this. It is good and maybe if someone who reads it can explain to me the ending. I’ll stamp this with….4 stars.

I loved the fact that this time travel story had someone going from the past to the present which I’ve not seen done much previously. Mary Seymour was definitely my favorite character and the way her departure was handled did not do her justice. I felt the conclusion was ‘cheesy’ and a huge let down given how much I enjoyed the rest of the novel. I know this sounds weird but I wish I’d just stopped reading when it started wrapping up and created my own ending. A strong 5 star until the conclusion which was a 2. Overall 3.5 stars.

The Phantom Tree is my kind of time travel novel! Now, please don't ask me about whether the particular mechanics of time travel as displayed in this story could actually work or not. It made enough sense to me so I went with it.

What really sold me on this story is that instead of a present day character traveling back to the past, we get a character from the past traveling to our present day. With this fascinating premise, we meet Alison Bannister who has been searching for a way to return to the 1550s and save her infant son Arthur ever since she emerged through a door to the present.

The years passed but Alison has not given up on hope. When she finds an old portrait of her cousin Mary Seymour, she's one step closer to figuring out how to return home. But at the same time, the portrait draws her back into the orbit of her ex-boyfriend Adam who believes the portrait is of Anne Boleyn. She can't be fully honest with him about what she knows and she needs his help to investigate. The story spills out from there and it kept me absolutely enthralled.

We get to see what happened to both Mary and Alison in the past, along with Alison's present day life. There were several twists and turns, including one big one I did not see at all coming. There was the perfect amount of mystery and intrigue as we try to learn what happened to Mary and baby Arthur. There's also the question of whether Alison can go back or if she should go back. After all, Arthur will no longer be a baby upon her return and she'll be a complete stranger to him. Not to mention, everyone at that time believed her to be a witch.

I really enjoyed seeing past Alison compared to present Alison. Present Alison sees a therapist and has a hard time trusting others with information about her personal life but she must risk opening up to the people closest to her in order to have a chance at finding Arthur. The insight into Mary Seymour's life was gripping and heart-wrenching. Women did not have an easy go of things at Wolf Hall, nor anywhere, really, in the 16th century.

I've never read anything by this author before but I was impressed with her writing. Gorgeous prose and impeccable plotting, backed up by excellent research. A thoroughly enjoyable and engaging read!

After much deliberation, I have determined this shall be a 4 star read!

I *loved* this ... after the halfway mark. I'd be lying if I said I didn't care about the beginning of this book. I found the pace to be quite slow, the characters mostly unlikeable and the story to be somewhat boring. And then—and I don't even remember the exact point—it became amazing. Everything I didn't like at the start evolved into something I held close to my heart. The characters each came into their own, their relationships with one another growing beautifully. The mystery spanning across over 400 years unravelled like a fun treasure hunt.

It took me over a week to get halfway, and three days to finish the rest. It was hovering around the two star mark, and then the ending made up for it.

The Phantom Tree is a hard novel to accurately categorize Yes, it’s about time travel since the characters move from century to century. Yes, it’s historical fiction since part of the book is set in Tudor England and known historical figures do make appearances. To be honest though, I’d call it “history light.” It’s even a bit of a mystery. But, what it really turned out to be, for me, was just a well written, wonderful story that grabbed my heart and wouldn’t let go.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

In present time, Alison Bannister discovers a portrait of a woman from the 1500s, labelled as Anne Boleyn. But Alison knows it's not Anne Boleyn - it's a woman named Mary Seymour. Alison knows this because, once upon a time, she knew Mary. More than four hundred years ago, Alison and Mary lived together as orphans in Wolf Hall, not quite enemies but also not quite friends.

Now in present time, the portrait is the key to Alison's past - to getting back to her original time, finding something deeply precious to her, and discovering what happened to Mary shortly after Alison vanished through time.

This novel explores the question of what happened to Mary Seymour, the very real daughter of Thomas Seymour and Katherine Parr. Shortly after her parents respectively died from a beheading and complications with childbirth, Mary Seymour disappears from the history books. Did she die young or live to adulthood? Nicola Cornick creates a fictionalized story surrounding Mary's potential life, asking what could have happened to her.

I really enjoyed this novel! It's a mix of historical and fantasy elements, with time travel! I didn't realize until I read the acknowledgements that Mary was a real person, though I had expected some historical figures to factor into the story. I love historical stories in general, seeing how authors weave historical fact with their own fictionalized stories, taking liberties where needed.

I liked the premise of the story. Time travel is super fascinating so I was interested in how Alison a) arrived in the future b) would get back to her time. I loved how Cornick split the POVs from Alison and Mary in the past, with Alison in the future, trying to put pieces together. It was fun when Alison and Adam, her present-day ex-boyfriend, would figure out things about Mary's life and other relatives, and then you'd see it played out in "real time" in the past.

I particularly loved Mary and Alison's POVs from the past. I haven't read any novels taking place in Elizabethan time - though I have read plenty of primary source writings from women during this time. I love reading about the politics and gender relations of this time, and how messy families were with their own loyalties and power dynamics.

I think my only criticism of this novel is the inclusion of magic and its ending. This novel has a supernatural element to it, mostly in Mary's POV. Although I enjoyed it at the beginning, I found it a bit cumbersome to the plot afterwards. I felt like it could have probably been eliminated altogether or used better. I feel similarly about the explanation of time travel. I wish we had seen Alison leave her time for the future - how she travelled and arrived in our present day. Since the novel's ending was very reliant on time travel and the supernatural, it felt rather rushed and not as tightly-written as the rest of the story, which was more focused on the historical.

In short, the novel does incredibly well with its historical aspects, but the supernatural/magical elements left a little to be desired. Overall, if you want a really lovely story about the potential (if somewhat fictionalized) life of a girl who vanished from history, involving time travel, and messy relationships, this is perfect for you!

This book really struck a chord with me. This whole idea of not fitting in and being at home, really, really hit home. Yes, the story is in places silly, coincidences are convenient etc. etc. but there was something wonderful about it for me. If you like Susannah Kearsley, I highly recommend picking this book up. It had for me the same vibes, I just ordered two more books by this author ;)