The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox
/Available now
Here’s a list of CW from The StoryGraph.
From the Publisher:
With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War, she warily makes her way to her new home.
The abbey is foreboding, the servants reserved and suspicious. But there is a treasure waiting behind locked doors: a magnificent library. Despite cryptic warnings from the staff, Ivy feels irresistibly drawn to its dusty shelves, where familiar works mingle with strange, esoteric texts. And she senses something else in the library too, a presence that seems to have a will of its own.
Rumors swirl in the village about the abbey’s previous owners, about ghosts and curses, and an enigmatic manuscript at the center of it all. And as events grow more sinister, it will be up to Ivy to uncover the library’s mysteries in order to reclaim her own story—before it vanishes forever.
Reader Friends, this book contains a secret family, a secret library, a secret society, and a magical secret! It’s just secrets on secrets on secrets! I’m a sucker for a gothic romance and one that contains a hidden library with magical powers? Instantly hooked. I listened to this one on audio and the things I did to make sure I could keep listening…my floors were so clean and my house has never been so free of dust.
Fox does an excellent job of crafting one of the most sympathetic and enraging characters I’ve read. Ivy, young, alone, and living in poverty, is like a fish out of water in her new home. She wants nothing more than to spend her days in the hidden library cataloging and reading every book she can reach, but her household staff do everything in their powers to keep her away from her precious books. Unsure of how to truly conduct herself, Ivy is torn between asserting her place of power in the home and her easy-going, non-confrontational nature. At every point that I wanted to shake Ivy for acting so naive and trusting, the author not so gently reminds the reader of the era in which Ivy lives and her lack of agency as a young, single woman. Nearly every character felt like they had their hands tied in some way when it came to protecting Ivy, which was both infuriating and begrudgingly made sense with the story.
I really enjoyed how much Ivy was completely enthralled by her new home and it’s secrets. A former abbey, Ivy’s new home is incredibly large and she is constantly getting lost in newly discovered halls and rooms and there are even hidden passageways! She is hopelessly in love with her Library and immediately wants to share her new-found literary wealth with the rest of the village. It’s pretty hard to get too mad at a character who finds herself newly titled and her first thought is to start a Bookmobile!
For such a charming and magical story, this book is actually quite dark and disturbing. There is some serious gaslighting that goes on and Ivy is placed in some seriously dangerous situations by people who are supposed to care for her so definitely take care when reading this one.
If you want to add this enchanting tale to your library, you can click on the cover above or here for ordering information. I borrowed the audiobook version from my local Library using the Libby app so don’t forget to check if your Library already bought it for you.
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