This was just “ehhh” for me, unfortunately - a bit too meandering and disjointed. Was good enough though that I *had* to finish, so I’d say 3.5 stars would be a sound review.
Thanks for the ARC opportunity!

I was interested in reading this book because the summary compared it to Lisa Jewell and Kate Morton. Although I did not love it quite as much as I loved books by those authors, I still thought it was an enjoyable read.

THE BIRDCAGE
By Eve Chase

Sisters
Secrets
Sweeping

The Birdcage is the gothic literary fiction/mystery I had been craving for and enjoyed reading.

The story is about three women who shares a secret, and a famous artist father, who have now reconvened at the Rock Point house on the cliff in Cornwall after two decades. The Birdcage held my attention with the family secret, the fantastic atmospheric setting, and well-drawn out characters that were so exciting to read about. The relationship between the sisters (Kat, Lauren, and Flora) is what I enjoyed reading about the most. I loved the pacing and the wonderful twist in the end, making this an engrossing read.

This was OK

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Putnam Books for my advanced copy of The Birdcage!

What I Enjoyed-

The Cover- Stunning.

The Dual TimeLine and Multiple POV's.

The Relationship Dynamics Between the 3 Sisters.

Why This Book Lost Stars- I wasn't invested in the characters.

Overall - I wouldn't necessarily recommend this one but am open to giving the author another shot.

Told from multiple perspectives, The Birdcage is a gothic British tale complete with secrets, an unkempt estate, and eccentric characters. Three half-sisters with the same father return to his neglected home after 20 years.

They slowly unpack the summer of 1999, during which they stopped going to their father’s. There is trauma for each sister based in her mother’s relationship with him, but something much darker occurred between then and the present day...

...Readers who enjoy psychological suspense will devour this complex novel.

For a full review, please see the linked content @
https://www.fyi50plus.com/2022/09/06/this-autumn-fall-in-love-with-a-good-book/

Reviewed on Goodreads, 17 February 2022:

All of Eve Chase's novels use the same Gothic-y, dual-timeline format to tell similar stories about complicated family dynamics and buried secrets. It's a winning formula for me, even if it makes the books so similar that they run together in my head. Still, THE BIRDCAGE stands out—at least to me—as her best story yet. Yes, it's predictable (I literally saw ALL of the plot twists coming), but that doesn't make the tale uncompelling. Maybe less suspenseful than it could have been otherwise; still, it remains an engrossing novel that kept me racing through the pages, even though I knew what to expect.

As far as characters go, the Finches are a likable bunch. They're privileged, entitled, and arrogant, yes, but they're also very human in their flaws and mistakes. It's hard not to root for them to come clean with one another so they can find healing in truth and re-connection. I wanted that for them, in spite of their dysfunctionality.

THE BIRDCAGE also feels deeper and wiser than Chase's other books. She plays with a lot of symbolism and meaningful motifs in the story. There's the eclipse, the birdcage, color, light and dark, etc. which added another layer to the tale. I prefer approachable commercial novels to artsy-fartsy literary fiction, but this novel blends the two in a way that really appeals to me.

All considered, I really enjoyed THE BIRDCAGE. If I could, I would give it 4 1/2 stars; since I can't, I'm rounding up.

Such a wonderful book by Eve Chase! The storytelling is beautiful, the setting (Rock Point) is atmospheric, and the characters are truly compelling.

The story was a bit choppy for me, ideas half finished and not picked up again, inferences never fully revealed. A lot of time the reader is assumed to understand what the narrator is thinking. The very last page was like this like Lauren knew what she had to do and noone would notice? But I have no idea what she was doing what it meant. I assume writing to Gemma but then it's not a secret that she does so why the secrecy and it was just a downer like okay the characters are magically okay and happy at the end but in reality those revelations and all the things that happened were super traumatic and unresolved so yeah I didn't love it

This novel is so cleverly plotted and it kept me engaged from the first turn of the page to the last.

Kat, Flora and Lauren have been summoned by their father back to Rock Point, the Cornish cliff house where the three half-sisters spent their summers together. While not one of them looks forward to going, they all three do make the trip.

The summer of 2009 left its mark on the three sisters, and the reader knows something traumatic happened, but the exact event is slowly (and perfectly) revealed through alternating chapters in the present (2019) and the past (2009).

I really enjoy Eve Chase's writing style and her character development. I felt that I had a real understanding of each of the sisters and their unique perspectives. I also love that Rock Point became a character itself in the story.

I received The Birdcage courtesy of the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A multigenerational domestic drama set in England. This story was just okay for me. I absolutely LOVED the cover and couldn't resist picking this book up but overall it was a little too slow for me and I had a hard time getting invested. Much thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

I wrote about this book on the Storygraph and Goodreads (with a link sent to twitter), I'll also add a link in my IG stories in a few days.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4928200306

The premise of the book was interesting to me as I like to read these kinds of mystery books, but I found the book to be a little too slow for me and I just kept wanting something to happen. The ending was the most interesting parts because everything was revealed but at that point, I was just reading for the sake of finishing the book unfortunately. I also felt like the main character and her siblings were also just trudging along. I didn't have a strong emotional connection with them or their situation. On a brighter note, I did really enjoy the atmosphere of the book and the descriptions were vivid.

A gothic mystery of three sisters and a traumatic event that impacts their lives forever. I liked the slow burn of the story as Chase reveals the incident that transpired. The colorful characters, dual timelines and POVs from the sisters creates an entertaining family mystery.

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for the eARC.
#NetGalley #TheBirdcage

The Birdcage is the reunion of three half-sisters to the summer home they shared on the Cornish coast with their father, a famous artist. They haven't spent much time together as adults and ae pretty clueless about the lives of the others. Something happened there 20 years prior, but that is kept a secret from the reader until close to the end, although there are plenty of reasons to suspect what it is earlier.

The descriptions of the area and the home are such that it is easy to picture it in your mind. And, the parrot who repeated what everyone said was a great comic relief in the story.

The youngest sister, Lauren, is the sympathetic character. By going back in forth in time to 1999, we come to learn why Lauren and her older sisters, Flora and Kat, have the strained relationship that they do. They all have secrets from the past and in the present.

Eve Chase does a great job of bringing us into this family, I just had a hard time caring about them much. Flora and Kat were downright mean as teenagers and using sibling jealousy as an excuse didn't make me like them any more. The "big reveal" of the main mystery wasn't really that big to me, it was all the smaller lies that revealed at the end that surprised me. It was wrapped up with a pretty bow at the end, all one happy family that they never seemed to be growing up.

You walk into this book being introduced to three half sisters, all from different mothers. As children, each summer they would go to the English coast to stay with their father and grandmother and attempt to bond as sisters. Fast forward to adulthood and their aging father has called them to come to the house now, to give them very important news and directions. What could it be?

You hear from each of their perspectives from the current time and past, the summer of "the eclipse". We are led to believe something awful happened that summer and their flashbacks and current circumstances slowly weave together the truth, or shades of the truth.

This was a characters study along with a mystery that was current and past. It kept me guessing and I wasn't sure where it was going until the end. It was wrapped up in the perfect way of not being perfect.

Thank you to Penguin Group Putnam and NetGalley for the advance e-copy of this book for my review.

A birdcage has long been a metaphor for something pretty trapped behind bars. In British author Eve Chase’s latest novel The Birdcage, three pretty things are trapped together, and the result isn’t… pretty.

Flora, Kat, and Lauren are half-sisters, all products of their artist father Charlie’s randy ways. As kids, they used to spend every August together at their father’s summer home in Cornish; Flora and Kat teaming up against Lauren, whom they resented since her mother was Charlie’s favorite. But they haven’t been together for twenty years, ever since a tragedy happened at the home. Now Charlie has summoned his daughters home, ostensibly to clean out the place since their grandmother passed away. But old resentments die hard; Charlie has an announcement that will stun them, and someone is leaving anonymous threatening notes. What really happened on the night of the eclipse twenty years ago? And who will pay for it now?

Click on the link for the complete review.

The Birdcage by Eve Chase is a 2022 G.P. Putnam’s Sons publication.

Three half-sisters- Kat, Flora, and Lauren- are reunited at Black Point- their father’s home on the Cornish Cliffs, after their father, a famous artist, summons them with the promise of a big announcement.

It is evidently the first time all three women have visited Black Point since one fateful summer they spent together as teens- the summer their father painted their portrait, which became one of his most famous paintings...

Being back brings back intense memories of that summer- for Lauren especially, as she recalls the way her sisters treated her, being supplanted as her father’s studio assistant by the woman who was supposed to be taking care of the girls, and her close friendship with the daughter of an estate worker.

As these memories draw closer to the surface, a pending sense of doom hangs over them as the women examine their lives now, and how that eventful summer shaped them as adults, while finally coming to terms with a startling truth about their father, and themselves, that will have a long-lasting effect on them all...

I have read a couple of books by this author and loved her style- which has strong Gothic influence in it- so I was really looking forward this, her latest effort.

Unfortunately, this one fell flat. Yes, I’m an outlier- this is an unpopular opinion- but I thought the story was all over the place, and ultimately, I didn’t feel that it came together cohesively at all. It was predictable in many ways, and I saw the big reveal coming a mile off. The atmosphere I was expecting was absent… blah, blah, blah.

No need to pick the book apart, really- it just missed the mark for me. I’m writing these words all too often this year, I'm afraid, and growing weary of writing reviews like this one.

Based on the average ratings for this book, though, it seems as though the problem might be mine- as most people seemed to have enjoyed it far more than I did- so don’t let me dissuade you. Hopefully, you will have better luck with it than I did.

Wonderful story of three half-sisters, dealing with an incident in their past that haunts them 20 years later. Gathered together to deal with an announcement from their artist father, the incident is gradually fleshed out for the reader. Though it could be considered dual timelines, it almost feels more like the occasional flashback.. The incident is revealed slowly, sometimes maddeningly, and the hints - at least for this reader - are subtle.

Four and a half stars for this unique and highly readable book.

Charles was quite the rogue. Women adored him, including his three daughters by three different women. Flora, the eldest born to Charles’ wife Annabelle. Kat, the middle child was born just five months after Flora to Blythe, his American mistress and Lauren (the baby) now 33 years old and just 13 months younger than Kat. Laurens mother, free spirited Dixie, was Charles lover who took her child and made a new life for herself and has just recently died of cancer.

Now the three half-siblings have been summoned back to the family home on the Cornish coast by their father and each is reluctant to return due to what happened on one fateful day some twenty years earlier. Each woman has found a way to deal with that past incident…..only to discover that in many instances the darkest secrets are often hidden in plain sight.

Author, Eve Chase takes readers into the completely diverse lives of three half-sisters whose past and present she beautifully knits together, while never missing a stitch.

3.5 eclipse stars

Eve Chase writes atmospheric mystery/thrillers and this one has just such a setting – Rock Point, a Cornish cliff house. The story features three half-sisters and we learn about their summers together and we discover early on that something terrible happened one summer during the eclipse.

The girls share a father who happens to be a famous artist. There are lots of secrets swirling about the house and Kat, Lauren, and Flora each have struggles of their own.

The timeline alternates between the past and present-day when the girls have been reunited at Rock Point to hear an important update from their father.

While I did enjoy this one, it took me quite a while to read. Perhaps if I had read it in one sitting, I would have enjoyed it more. The pace was a little slow to me and I struggled a bit to keep the sisters straight as I read it. I still am a fan of this author and I’ll be anxiously awaiting her next book.