I enjoyed the spooky atmosphere that was perfectly captured in this book. Unfortunately, I found the story to be overdone, and I was able to guess the twists far in advance of their reveal. I kept waiting for something unexpected to happen, and it didn’t. I wish I had liked this one as much as the author’s The Daughters of Foxcote Manor.

Thank you very much to Penguin Group Putnam for the advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book had all the elements I love in a Gothic-type story: family secrets, a large old house, threatening or disturbing events, a hint of madness, and mysterious strangers. Lauren and her two half sisters used to spend summers at their grandparents' home in Cornwall until something happened on the day of the solar eclipse in August 1999. Lauren was traumatized and has only patchy memories of what happened that day and the rest of the family won't speak of it. It is only when their father cajoles them all into coming to Cornwall for a "big announcement" 20 years later that the sisters are all together there again.

The story bounces back and forth between 1999 and 2019. The present day is told alternately through the points-of-view of all three sisters but only Lauren's perspective shows us what was happening in 1999. This technique allows the reader to experience the same ambivalence that Lauren feels about her sisters.

I didn't give the book five stars because I thought the end was a little too tidy and rushed. It didn't ruin the story but as I read the last page I did find myself thinking "Oh. All right then."

Recommended for those who enjoy stories where setting is a big part of the story, who like their suspense to be pleasantly low-stakes (especially right before bed!) and want relatable characters.

Slow burner about three half-sisters invited to their father’s home on the Cornish coast where a tragedy occurred during their childhood. This took a while to get going, and the present-day storyline lacked suspense. The past events, revolving around the day of a solar eclipse, had more intrigue, and the continuing effect on the youngest sister, Lauren, through the present day was palpable. But the resolution by way of a newspaper article was anticlimactic and a let down.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy.

A dual timeline generational mystery filled with secrets and strong emotions between a pieced together family surrounding a selfish patriarch as he makes a startling announcement. The Birdcage is a delight and filled with clues and metaphors within it's tight prose.

Charles, a famous and infamous artist has summoned his children to his Cornwall estate for a gathering and a declaration. The half sisters (Kat, Flora and Lauren) dread this meeting at their old summer gathering place. Multiple points of view from the past are interspersed to give us hints on what has already transpired. The sisters are bright and vibrant characters and you will enjoy meetings them and hearing about their lives. As the timelines converge we learn the great secret as well as uncover who is terrorizing the family with threats. If you like dual timelines, family mysteries and secrets, big and bold characters, then #TheBirdCage is for you
#Penguingroup #putnam #netgalley #netgalleyreads

** spoiler alert **


This is a good book for contemporary fiction lovers, especially those who enjoy family dramas and sisterhood in their books. I was engaged in the storyline and finished this book in about a week, but I don't think it ever needs a reread from me. I wish this book had an ending similar to that of Malibu Rising, where the adult kids basically cast off their absentee father and took the first steps toward healing old wounds. This story, I felt, gave way too much grace to a father who not only sucks as a dad but also just as a person. I wish the girls had told him off more and he had paid a little more of a price for his shitty choices. Instead, it felt like everyone was all too eager to forgive him. I'm also getting kind of tired of the trope in these types of family dramas that sees an unhappily married wife secretly taking birth control behind her husband's back, while he thinks they're trying to have another baby. I get that this is a really useful plot device for showing that a marriage is on the rocks, but every time I read it, I feel icky.
Other than these complaints, I really enjoyed the story, the setting, and the characters. This is overall a good book, and I think it's a great pick for lovers of contemporary women's fiction.

Thank you Putnam and NetGalley for an E-Arc copy in exchange for an honest review.

First and foremost the cover on this move is one of the most stunning and alluring I have ever seen. It’s simply gorgeous. That alone made me VERY interested in learning more about this novel.

This novel is told in 3 viewpoints of three half sisters who share the same father: Kat, Lauren and Flora. Alternating from past to present.

This book is very slow to start, it takes until about 20% in to build up intrigue to what happened in the past the girls keep mentioning concern about. I had to consciously work to commit to get to this point to become more interested in the plot.

At the point where the plot picks up their father has invited the three girls to Rock Point (2019), where something clearly terrible (and mysterious) happened in the summer of 1999 and he reintroduces a woman into their lives that was also present in that time period causing great distress to the three girls.

The descriptions in this book are as beautiful and vivid as the cover art, giving the novel a very lovely poetic element.

I found it difficult to connect with any of the sisters, especially Flora and Kat in the beginning. Lauren slowly grew on me and I became interested in her POV and towards the end I was finally able to connect more with Flora and Kat.

This book doesn’t really pick up momentum until around the 50% mark and then information and secrets are slowly revealed to you, like the slow smooth drip of a coffeemaker.

It takes until the very end of the novel for everything to be revealed. There are several surprising secrets revealed but no major “AHA!” moment, at least for me.

I’m giving this one 3.5 stars. This was a decent read.

When half-sisters Kat, Flora, and Lauren receive an invitation from their father to return to Rock Point, their Cornish summer home, it's not exactly something any of them truly want to do. They haven't even been back since that summer twenty years ago--a summer they'd do anything to forget.

But they reluctantly go, and it soon becomes clear, as the threatening atmosphere escalates, that they're not alone, and someone else not wanting that summer to be forgotten is watching them from the shadows.

Will the sisters be able to keep the past hidden? Or will they meet a fate as desperate as the one they're trying to escape?

Eve Chase's The Birdcage is told from the perspectives of the three sisters in both past (which is only Lauren's voice) and present. There's a terrific sense of atmosphere here--Chase's prose is poetic and lively, and you can feel the isolation of Rock Point. I enjoyed the slow burn of the story, and the sense of mystery, but after a while I felt desperate for it to get on. And the lovely descriptions I soaked up in the beginning started to wear my patience thin (and slowed the pace a bit). Along with that, I really didn't connect to the characters--while I could sympathize with Lauren at points, the others weren't exactly likable, with the exception of Bertha the parrot.

In the end, this is a book I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys a slow burner of a mystery and those who don't mind description-heavy prose. Though it wasn't a complete hit for me, I did enjoy it, and I would absolutely read more from this author.

Thanks very much to Penguin Group for allowing me to read a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

Thank you Netgalley for the free ARC in return for an honest review.

Lauren, Flora, and Kat are half sisters with the same famous, womanizing artist father but different mothers. They spend much of their childhood together as sisters, yet suffer bouts of jealousy as they want their dad's sole love. Flashing back between a life changing day in their teens and a current day reunion after the holidays, a secret has prevented each sister from finding happiness in relationships as they deal with feelings of guilt. Thrown into the mix are threatening notes forcing the family to face the past. Lovely writing and complex characters and their relationships propel the story forward. For fans of Kate Morton.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a digital ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.
WOW. This is a lush, captivating, slow-burn work that Chase knocks out of the park. For fans of Kate Morton or Susanna Kearsley, this is another standout author. 3 women, who share the same father, are drawn back to Rock Point at the request of their artist father, Charlie, for an "announcement". What happens over the multi-day stay is a reckoning with the summer that changed their lives forever, 20 years ago. I have a habit of trying to guess The Big Twist because...I'm impatient, perhaps? Anyway-I sent a text to my best friend about a quarter of the way through the book with my guesses. The one that I was initially least confident about, and had actually tossed out as somewhat of a joke, ended up being correct, in a way. The Big Twist left me shocked, and of course happened right when my family requested dinner. I threw sandwiches and cereal at them while never taking my eyes off the pages, so drawn into the reveal was I. Chase hooked me in with the three personalities of Laura, Flora, and Kat and kept me drawn in the entire novel. The Final Big Twist was done with Morton-like precision stabbing (if you're a fan of Kate Morton books, you know how her Big Twists feel when you put all the pieces together), making you feel the spectrum of emotions when you pieced everything together. This was an outstanding novel, and I highly recommend everyone read this.

This is the fourth book that I have read by Eve Chase and another 5 star read for me. The Birdcage is a beautifully written novel about sisters, family secrets, grief and loss.. but also about hope and forgiveness. I am sad to finish this story because now I have to wait for Chase to write another novel. I cannot recommend this book enough. A truly pleasurable read.



https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4587834615

Flora, Kat and Lauren are three half-sisters who share a father. They gather at their father’s Cornwall estate for a weekend to portion out their late grandmother’s belongings. The estate is the site where a tragic event occurred twenty years ago during an eclipse. The story is told from the viewpoints of each sister, in the present and in the past. I raced through the pages to find out what happened twenty years ago. I really enjoyed the in-depth characterization of each of the sisters. I also enjoyed the wonderful, moody, atmospheric setting. The estate is almost a character in itself.

A sweeping family saga. Three very different half sisters with plenty of skeletons in their closets. I love the setting where the family estate is located. Great descriptions of the place. An interesting study of secrets and lies within a family.

This book is more about the relationships of three sisters that are very complicated. Twenty years ago something horrible happened that made the sisters relationship even more tumultuous. Told from 3 pov’s , the reunion and what happened years ago, we find out all the secrets that everyone has been keeping. Not my favorite from this author. I couldn’t get behind the characters and everything seemed predictable. Just ok.

3.5/5 stars!!

Reading this book felt like being a part of one of the biggest guessing games. This was a very interesting read for me! It was full of drama, tension, and twists and turns!! I thought Chase's writing was excellent and the story flowed really well. I also really liked the alternating timelines present within this book. However, I didn't really feel connected to a lot of the characters which is a bit unfortunate.

Overall, a pretty enjoyable story and I'm glad I picked it up.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!!

Review of The Birdcage:

I love stories that unfold, one layer at a time, like a multi-course meal.
Each bite there are elements that surprise me and keep a momentum for the next course…the next chapter.
A story about three half sisters coming back to their fathers family house after an event that occurred during the eclipse.
Memories start to piece themselves together and each chapter reveals a new insight.
A love a book that builds this way.
The story flowed so wonderfully. Some twists I guessed and other were a surprise which made it so fun to read.
Each character was distinct and their voices and perspectives adding to the unfolding in a way that made me zip through the book to find out all of the secrets.
Fun, evocative, and well written, I am so glad to have found this author and will definitely read more of her work!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In Eve Chase’s atmospheric new novel, three half-sisters reunite at their family's Cornwall estate, where a tragedy from the past still haunts the present.

Flora, Kat, and Lauren are as different as different can be with different mothers, looks, personalities, and lifestyles. In fact, they seem to share only two things in common: a famous artist father who is as undependable as he is charming and talented, and the memory of a tragedy that occurred twenty years ago during an eclipse at their grandparents’ Cornwall estate. Said tragedy has haunted the three sisters ever since. When they reunite at Rock Point twenty years later, secrets are revealed, causing them to reexamine their personal relationships and what it means to be a family.

If the above dynamics sound like they would make for a good story, they do!

The story is told in a dual timeline format from each sister’s perspective. While Flora and Kat are well-fleshed out and compelling characters, the sensitive, artistic Lauren really carries the narrative and connects with the reader emotionally. Their relationship has many gray areas, which I loved: there is genuine love; there is also underlying resentment and competition for their father’s affection.

The author’s detailed descriptions of Rock Point lend an atmospheric eeriness and looming sense of dread, which seems to follow the characters throughout the house and grounds. Rock Point and its inhabitants are haunted by the past, frozen in time on that fateful day of the eclipse twenty years ago.

Fresh use of similes and metaphors gives the descriptions personality and color and keeps the pages turning. I finished this book in just a few days!

Recommended for fans of Kate Morton, Lucy Foley, and readers who enjoy dual timeline mysteries and family dramas.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Group Putnam, and author Eve Chase for a complimentary copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

First off, thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for granting me early access to this book in exchange for an honest review.
Lauren, Flora, and Kat could not be more different half-sisters. A business minded loner, a stifled housewife, and a misunderstood outsider all have one thing in common-their eccentric artist father who they visited every August growing up at a secluded house in Rock Point.
This story follows these three sisters uncovering the story of what happened so long ago while trying to find closure from everything their secrets have changed in their lives.
This atmospheric novel does a great job at creating an eerie sense of foreshadowing throughout. I would recommend this book to people who enjoy suspenseful family dramas.

I loved this mystery! Eve Chase has, yet again, woven a tale of secrets, siblings, houses, and the darkness that can arise from a within a human soul. Absolutely unputdownable. I loved this!

#TheBirdcage #NetGalley Thank you to the publisher and @NetGalley for the E-ARC copy of this book. The rating of this book is entirely of my own opinion.

Eve Chase once again delivers a novel rich in character and suspense, layered in secrets and vividly evoked landscapes. THE BIRDCAGE is ideal escape reading: before the first page has ended, the reader will be totally enmeshed in this wonderfully evoked landscape of old houses and distant estates. Highly recommended.