The Secrets of Rochester Place

A beautiful story of love and survival, going on beyond the time. Just the location stays the same, Rochester Place.

An Irish woman called Mary rings Corinne, an emergency services operator, and says she’s trapped under rubble in a house that no longer exists, a house that was bombed in the Blitz, more than 70 years ago. Corinne is immediately immersed in a mystery of a strange phone call and starts to investigate on her own what was going on in the middle of WWII.
In the spring of 1937, a young Basque girl Teresa is evacuated to London from Guernica. When she hears the news that Bilbao had fallen and called out for Mari, the goddess of the mountains, the universe sends her an Irish storyteller with cherry-red shoes instead.

This is a story about neverending love, hatred, ignorance, bigotry, refugees, goodness, and hope. Everything is possible and not only by imagination.

The novel is fascinating, written with great compassion for all the characters, past and current times. All of them are well developed and relatable. Mary is a modern woman, even though she lives in times when differences between men and women were greater than today. Teresa is just a child, but she has to grow up fast.

Can a house bring the family together again? Does everything happen in circles?

An enjoyable and emotional read. Hearty book.

I loved this book. A great twist at the end and it all comes together. It jumps from present day to pass events but easily followed.

Characters have meaning and you really get to know them and love the connection at the end.
Read this one is just 3 days. Couldn't put it down.

I enjoyed this book very much. It is slow for perhaps two-thirds of the book. Not slow as in uneventful, but perhaps in the setting out of the many layers to the story. There are many characters who step in and out of the story, and because some chapters are long, I sometimes got a little frustrated trying to remember who they are, or where they fit in.

It’s a complex story with different historical conflicts to learn about, and understand how they interweave. The Spanish Civil war, WWII and past events in Ireland all interlink within the book. My own knowledge of European history is practically non-existent so I have spent time looking up various events online. Because the book jumps around in both time and place, I sometimes found myself a bit lost. Nothing a little patience doesn’t resolve though, because the last third where all the mysteries and confusion are peeled back reveals an incredibly moving, quite stunning conclusion.

All the characters have a story to tell, one of staunchness in the face of much adversity and all suffer bigotry and racism at some point in their lives. I found the story very affecting, not least because there must be many real people out there who have lived very similar lives to the characters in this book. I find it incredibly sad the way it is always ordinary, innocent citizens who suffer the most from acts of war and this book brings those stories to life.

The ending is absolutely superb I thought, and I was certainly in need of a few tissues. A wonderful book that I will remember for some time to come.

**review to be added to my blog on or around publication day**

An unusual start with Teresa coming across to England as a refugee from Guernica. A well plotted story set in 1926, 1936 -WW2 and present day. Easy to follow what was going on. The ending is excellent. I read it in 24 hours. Also, I am reading this quite close to publication date and hope that the final copy has had the typos and bloopers edited out by now. With thanks to NetGalley, the publishers and the author for the e-ARC of this book to read and review.

I absolutely adored The Secrets of Rochester Place!

The story had me hooked straight away and I couldn’t stop reading. I was intrigued to read the struggles of Mary & Theresa & how these tied them together. The bigotry people face throughout the years is heartbreaking & it was an education to read how this was shown to all ‘outsiders’’, regardless of nationality. It was absorbing & I’m not ashamed to say it reduced me to tears a couple of times.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for the opportunity to review #NetGalley #TheSecretsOfRochesterPlace #IrisCostello

A really great read which will intrigue you from the very first page.
A story set in the present day and the 1930,s and the Second World War years.
The book is not what you expect from reading the first few pages it is not a time shift novel and it is not until the end of the book that the reason for how the book is written is resolved
It is a beautifully woven story surrounding Teresa an eight year old child who has escaped from Guernica and the Spanish civil war and brought to England were whilst in an orphanage waiting to be housed she meets Mary . They instantly become friends and Mary takes Teresa to live with her.
In the present day Corrine a first responder receives a distressed call from a women called Mary about a child trapped in rubble under a house that has collapsed at a given address however when the emergency services go to the address they say it doesn’t exist.
Disturbed by this call Corrine starts on a journey to discover more than she could have ever have imagined.

Thank you for NetGalley for providing me with this book for review. Absolutely enchanting, one of my favourite books of the year. Please write more.

This is a tale of love, war, heartbreak, and family- and wow, did it get to me by the final chapters!

I absolutely adored the narratives weaving throughout. The voice of a young Spanish refugee, combined with the Irish republican living in war-time London, and then to the modern-day Corinne, who is drawn in to this tale from the past through a mysterious phone call, begging for her help.

The stories from the past were told with such feeling and detail, I was fully engrossed and could imagine the terror quite easily. Moving onwards, the story of love and difficulties of war-time life and prejudices was touching and raw. And finally, how it was all woven together into such a seamless story centred around family was superb.

My first book by this author, but certainly not my last. For fans of historical fiction, I wholeheartedly recommend this book!