A really cute story about a quirky ventriloquist whose puppets provide ongoing commentary to everything she does, but are at least mercifully silent during sex. It’s got a brooding, complicated hero, a couple of easily guessable mysteries, and a Happily Ever After, which I don’t consider a spoiler since this is a conventional romance. I mean really, the love interest is never a sociopathic murderer in these kinds of books, and you can certainly never trust an aging woman who dresses garishly and has a heavy hand with the makeup

What dragged this down from 4 stars to 3 stars was the eye-rollingly awful use of pop psychology, where characters who suffer extreme psychological trauma are instantly cured when they can finally be coerced into talking about it. And our quirky heroine knowing full well that only a trained psychologist should be attempting therapy, but since there isn’t one around, well, the couple of human psychology classes she took in drama school will do. No consideration that she might do more harm than good. Also, this story should have wrapped up a few chapters earlier, but it gets unnecessarily dragged out because our two lovers are incapable of having an adult conversation about their feelings for one another.

Audiobook, borrowed from my library via Overdrive, with an excellent performance by Erin Bennett.

Read for the 2017 Romance Bingo. It could fit any of these squares:
Headless woman: beheaded by the cover artist
Guy/Girl Next Door: they spent a summer living in the same house as stepsiblings, and are neighbors in the current timeline
Rogue: The MC believes her love interest is a sociopath who played cruel tricks on her and has even attempted murder
Second Chances: Also third and fourth chances
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Light romance fiction is not generally my thing, but I'm trying to read outside my usual genres.

The story is well told (despite some predictable plot twists) and there's some great writing (by which I probably mean that the lady sure can write a sex scene). It was easy to root for Annie, and her relationship with four-year-old Livia, a mute child who's experienced a trauma, was very genuine and sweet.

However, this book did not do it for me as a romance or as a gothic novel pastiche. I was totally uncompelled by Annie and Theo's relationship. Phillips tried to give Theo psychological realism AND have him don the role of the gothic antihero AND make us like him, and it didn't all add up for me. Some might enjoy the Jane Eyre and Rebecca shoutouts, but they didn't really inform the story that much.

Definitely not my thing, but I would certainly recommend Phillips to readers who enjoy romantic fiction with a light tone, good writing, and a lot of interest and depth beyond the romance arc. ( )

This one took a little while to get going. ( )

This book was brilliant! The dedication is to Mary Stewart, Anya Seton, Charlotte Bronte, Daphne DuMaurier, Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney and their books serves as an homage to each of these classic authors. In true gothic style, we have a broken, brooding hero, an orphaned heroine with nowhere else to go. Its as if the ladies in the dedication scripted this book along with her, with the addition of Ms. Phillips's own brand of heroine--strong, snarky, independent.

I have not read all of SEP's backlist, but I'd venture to say this is her best work to date. I've enjoyed her other novels, with quirky, loveable heroines, but this one is the top of the heap for me. This is a book I will read again and again.

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Un libro della Phillips è per me la certezza di leggere qualcosa che mi piacerà molto ed anche questa volta è stato così.
Una storia un po’ diversa dal solito, più sofferta e intima ma che riesce, come sempre, ad entrare nel cuore.
Due bellissimi personaggi che escono un po’ alla volta. Lei Annie dolce e volitiva, non si arrende mai difronte alle difficoltà, attrice di poche fortune ma bravissima ventriloqua, dopo la morte della madre torna a Peregrine Island per passare lì i due mesi invernali che le consentiranno di mantenere la proprietà del cottage dove passava le vacanze estive. Lui Theo Harp, bellissimo e dannato, è il suo primo amore, quello che le aveva spezzato il cuore da adolescente. La vicinanza forzata sarà la spinta a sciogliere i nodi creatisi nel passato.
Se l’avvio può sembrare un po’ rallentato la storia, però, prende piede rapidamente facendo crescere l’attenzione e il coinvolgimento con il progressivo svelarsi dei due protagonisti, ben più complessi e positivi di quanto potessero apparire inizialmente.
Un altro imperdibile.
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