Book Review: The Girl in the Photograph

When Alice Eveleigh arrives at Fiercombe Manor during the long,
languid summer of 1933, she finds a house steeped in mystery and
brimming with secrets. Sadness permeates its empty rooms and the
isolated valley seems crowded with ghosts, none more alluring than
Elizabeth Stanton whose only traces remain in a few tantalisingly
blurred photographs. Why will no one speak of her? What happened a
generation ago to make her vanish?

As the sun beats down
relentlessly, Alice becomes ever more determined to unearth the truth
about the girl in the photograph – and stop her own life from becoming
an eerie echo of Elizabeth’s…

The Girl in the Photograph switches between Alice’s first person account of her life in 1933 and onwards and a third person account of Elizabeth’s life in the 1890’s. As Alice tries to unravel the mystery surrounding Elizabeth’s life, you, the reader get snippets of information ahead of the narrator when you read Elizabeth’s parts. Even though the reader knows who the girl in the photograph is before Alice does, the revelations around the photograph towards the end of the novel make the story more interesting.

Whilst I did enjoy this book, I feel it would have benefited from a few more twists and turns to create suspension and grip the reader. The whole thing was quite simple and tied up neatly with a traditional happy ending where as I would have preferred a bit of a page turner than what this book turned out to be. Don’t get me wrong, it kept my interest and plodded along nicely there just wasn’t anything particularly new or refreshing with this book.