I picked up this pretty thing while roaming around the "free" section on the Kindle store. It sounded interesting and the cover was pretty so I went for it. I am pleasantly surprised I must say. It is good, not amazing, but enough to keep my attention for me to pick up the next one.
The Spirited Manor is a paranormal mystery with a bit of romance sprinkled in set in a historical fiction setting. The year is 1890 and Mrs. Clara O'Hare has recently become widowed, her late husband, Thomas, having just passed some months prior. She felt as though her life was over, Clara becoming just a shell of herself. She buys a new home and moves, to try and get away from the memories of Thomas, seeing him and being reminded of him at every turn. It is with this new house that she discovers that the veil between the living and the dead is actually quite thin.
(SPOILER WARNING! START)
So, the book starts out with Clara coming to the new home and meeting the staff that had come with the house: Mr. Willard, the butler and Mrs. Nan, the maid. They make her feel very welcome but she is still grieving over poor Thomas. Clara tries to spend her days out of the house, to try and get back into the swing of things and not to wallow in her grief within the house.
Soon enough, she comes across a vaudeville house who is hosting a medium: Wesley Lowenherz. He is apparently pretty renowned and so she goes in, slightly hoping for a chance to, perhaps, speak with Thomas. As things start, the things that come out of the medium's mouth seems to hit very close to home for Clara, her thinking that Thomas is trying to send her a message. After she shakes it off, deeming that this cannot be real, she starts to head out but are stopped by Mr. Lowenherz's words, seemingly locking eyes with hers:
"There is a woman here tonight. You know who you are. And your loved one says, 'Do not fear to live and love again, for watching your sadness is worse than death. Do not die while you are still alive, my love.'"
At this she flees. Clara believes the message is for her, from her dear Thomas. It is with this that she believes Mr. Lowenherz to be a true medium, able to speak with the dead. And it is with this that things start to take off!
I believe it to be that same night that Clara sees her for the first time. A ghost! It is the ghost of a poor little girl, around fourteen years in age. She is absolutely startled by her and is visited by her quite frequently after that. Clara asks Mr. Willard and Mrs. Nan about the strange girl, but does not get much of a response. The ghost beckons Clara to follow her, leading her to the deed of the house, seeing that the previous owner was Lord Horace Oroberg.
Clara visits him to inquire about the house and tells him of the apparition she has been seeing and he is delighted. He invites her to a seance at his manor, saying that she must come! He had just hired a medium prior to her visit, the very same day, and thus believe it to be fate for her to join in on the journey.
Clara hesitantly agrees and that weekend she is off to the manor. There, she meets many different characters of people, but who really caught her eye was the medium, Mr. Wesley Lowenherz himself! Soon enough they have their seance, during which the little ghost girl appears before Clara. Wesley asks about her appearance and she is then described, and then is asked if her name is Minnie, which is soon confirmed. The little ghost girl is Minnie. After this point, things move pretty quickly. Throughout the night, people are murdered! By who? No one knows yet. Wesley and Clara discover a secret chamber underneath the house which seemed to hold something, who they soon discover was Violet! The daughter-in-law! Who actually isn't quite so human as led to believe. In the end, Clara vanquishes the demon, saving Wesley, with only one other survivor besides them, Marguerite, a special agent who came to investigate the demon.
In between all the murdering and other events, Clara and Wesley fall in love and Wesley confesses that he is not a medium. He started the ruse to try and get close to Horace Oroberg, believing him to be the one who murdered his sister, Minnie. This all happens in like 48 hours, by the way. I can't believe Clara would've fallen for him so fast like that, the pacing was unnatural. Anyways, they head home, Wesley dropping her off first and with their conversation, she discovers that her house staff weren't actually alive! They bid their farewells and Clara goes inside to speak with Mr. Willard.
(SPOILER WARNING! END)
Overall, the story wasn't bad. The ending, I felt, was extremely quick paced, especially the romance. There were several instances where Clara thought to herself that her being in the situations she was in, with Wesley, were highly inappropriate considering they were not wed, but she didn't bother to fix herself! She didn't bother to move away when they were too close together or let go when they were touching for too long. Like woman! You are a widow! You were literally wallowing in so much grief over your dead husband but then a new man comes in and you are head over heels for him already! They declared their love for each other by the end of the book! Seriously?!
There are more books to this series, four to be specific. The romance between these two characters could've been a nice slow burn. In the synopsis for the next books, Wesley and Clara are still the main protagonists. It's not like they are gone from the series, so I don't know why the romance so severely rushed. That was a big disappointment for me. And their behaviour was completely unacceptable! Clara is a fresh widow, she shouldn't already be jumping another man's bones so soon!
Otherwise, the story was nice and I definitely would recommend this, especially since this was a free book. If this were a $8.99 book, I wouldn't want you to waste your time and money on it because it is definitely not worth that much. I will be reading the rest of the series though. My local library does Hoopla and Hoopla has all four books available to borrow, so I hope that the series gets better and not worse.
Thank you for reading! Continue to stay safe and comment down below your thoughts on this one! Hope you will be back next week for the my next review!
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