This was quite a ride! An intricate but very bizarre dual narrative. In one timeline, it is 1843 and novelist Victor Hugo's beloved daughter has drowned. He ultimately becomes obsessed with seances to try to make contact with her. Along the way, he begins communicating with the devil. In present day, mythologist Jac L'Etoile is visiting the Isle of Jersey, the same location where Hugo conducted his seances, to meet up with a man with a troubled past that she knows from her youth. Jac slowly learns that her childhood love Theo is troubled because he is haunted by one of his past lives.

It is hard to discuss much of this book without giving away spoilers. But it is a complicated ghost story with the premise that some of the characters have been reincarnated from previous lives. In Victor Hugo's timeline, he is constantly tempted by the devil to sacrifice someone in exchange for his daughter's soul being sent to reinhabit the sacrificed individual's body. This book takes us from present day to the mid 1800s and some chapters go all the way back to 56 BCE.

This book requires huge amounts of suspension of disbelief. The plot is just really out there. While I deeply appreciate that the Victor Hugo storyline was based on actual history, both Hugo's actual history and the Victorian obsession with trying to commune with spirits, I personally have more of an eye rolling stance on ouija boards and seances overall. I also was hoping the two storylines would be woven together a bit more securely by the conclusion and other than the location, which was relevant to characters from Hugo's time period, the two narratives just weren't super connected.

This is a great example to never judge a book by its cover. The title and cover art lead me to believe this would be a passionate love story. In reality, it is a detailed and very bizarre ghost story.

Looking at the number of stars I gave the last one in the series, I seemed to have liked it, even though I didn't much care for the first in the series. They were so long ago though, I don't remember much. I had to trudge a bit through this one. I simply didn't like any of the characters, including Victor Hugo. Just as you get involved in one time period, you're off into another one, and it's more people who don't talk to each other. Sheesh

Dear Publisher - I was unable to finish this book before the digital ARC expired. I appreciate the opportunity to review this title before it was published and hope you will continue to approve access to your titles! I am continually hand selling titles I have read to my customers and recommending them on Goodreads, Litsy and my personal blog.

I have a hard time investing deeply in mysteries, but I thought this one was really good. I love the angle of the daughter of Victor Hugo and found the twists to, while not necessarily surprising, to be fun.

I did not post a review for this one on Goodreads, other than giving it 3 stars. While I found the storyline intriguing - I love stories that feature a book as a main plot device and even have a whole shelf dedicated to such books on GR - I just couldn't get into this one the way I would have liked. The pacing felt a bit off and I couldn't connect with the characters. However, it was engaging enough, overall, to keep me reading to the end.

This is one of my favorite authors! I love her books! I thought this book was well written, it kept my attention.

After reading and loving The Book of Lost Fragrances, I was excited to read another book from this series with Jac L’Etoile as the main character. And I wasn't disappointed.

It's set on Jersey Island, and besides Jac's there are two other storylines. One follows a family in ancient Celtic times, and the second explores the time Victor Hugo spent in Jersey while in exile. All the storylines are connected the same way as in the previous book.

Jac is an interesting character, even though her stubbornness and unwillingness to admit that the things happening to and around her might mean something more is sometimes frustrating. But I love to read about her, to learn more about her family and other important people in her life. She's got a haunting past, and so she built high walls around herself. And yet, all those adventures during her research (she's a mythologist) slowly make her open up a little bit. It's great to see her character develop and change, as she (sometimes still unwillingly) accepts things she didn't before.
All the other characters were quite complex as well, some of them quite quirky. I enjoyed reading about them all, though I missed Robbie and Griffin a lot!

In a review I read, the reader mentions how they didn't like Hugo communicating with the Devil during his seances, which I actually liked. The Shadow of the Sepulcher (Devil) is very often called just the Shadow. It's not literally the Devil, but the Shadow in Jungian terms, and I like Jung.

All in all, great book! :)

Oh. My. Gosh. I cannot express how much I loved this book. I have recommended this book and all of Rose's others to patrons who love historical novels with magical realism in them. It also made me read a few books about Oscar Wilde. Nice.