When food editor Olivia Shaw’s mother passes away, Olivia is shocked to learn that she has inherited an estate and a title to go with it. Olivia leaves San Francisco, still reeling with grief and shock, to uncover the things that her mother has been hiding from her. As soon as she sees the manor, Rosemere Priory, she recognizes it as the subject of her mother’s paintings. But Olivia still can’t figure out why her mother never talked about it and why her mother let such a beautiful building fall into disrepair. In order to look for answers Olivia begins digging into her mother’s past. As she goes digging, Olivia realizes the manor with peeling wallpaper, broken rooms, and growing vines hides inconceivable secrets. Even though her life back in San Francisco is calling her name, Olivia finds herself falling in love with the delightful English town as well as the residents. But to make the best decision Olivia has to first uncover all of the secrets that Rosemere Priory is hiding behind it’s magnificent walls.
I picked up this book even though it isn’t something that I normally read since it isn’t YA, because it showed up on several lists by Goodreads. It seemed like it was showing up everywhere when I was on Goodreads and the story seemed pretty interesting. An inheritance that the character has never heard of? Sign me up! If I had to take a guess about who the intended audience for this book is, I would imagine that this book would be a huge hit with married women who are in their late 20s to late 40s. It feels very much like a chick-lit book and I can easily see it being a book club pick.
This book had a nice and simple start which I really liked. It didn’t go too deep into the background nor did it go too far into the action and start in the middle of something. I liked that the beginning of the book wasn’t complicated because it showcased how it was the start of a journey for Olivia. I did not know much going into the book apart from the fact that Olivia had inherited an estate in England. My ignorance was the perfect parallel to Olivia’s confusion and amazement at the fact that her mother had such a life in England. Of course that is something that can’t be controlled especially since you are reading this book review but it was a coincidence that enhanced my experience of reading The Art of Inheriting Secrets.
Since Olivia is a famous food critic, it is a given that there will be a lot of references to food in this book. I was however surprised by all of the references to India and Indian food. The descriptions of Indian food were pretty much perfect. I could imagine eating the dish and my mouth would start to water. In fact, anytime that Barbara O’Neal started talking about food, I would become hungry because her way of describing the flavors was so beautiful. Not only were the descriptions of food really well written, the way that the reader is shown the setting rather than told about the setting is amazing as well. The descriptions were one of the best parts of this book.
The other best part of this book was the plot. It was super engaging and it moved pretty quickly. I usually take little notes or write down predictions and my thoughts while reading but I didn’t write down any notes for about half of this book because I was so busy reading that I didn’t want to put this book down. Even though the plot was captivating, it was also predictable. I was able to anticipate many of the plot points before they happened. Considering that this is supposed to be a bit of a mystery, I would have hoped that it wasn’t predictable. Unfortunately, my hopes and dreams were crushed. Even though I was able to predict many of the plot points, I am not very mad about it because the story itself was interesting.
The one thing that really made me nervous and that I wasn’t a fan of in this book was the ending. Since I was reading The Art of Inheriting Secrets as an ebook I wrote down the percentage I was through with while writing down my notes. I was nervous about the ending because I was done with eight-six percent of the book and none of the problems had been solved. Every single piece of conflict was still unresolved with only fourteen percent of the book left! For reference, that is about 50 pages (if you are reading the paperback which has 357 pages). This would not have been that big of a problem since fifty pages could have been enough to resolve all of the conflicts, IF it hadn’t been for the creation of new problems! There were several new conflicts created, one of them being created as late as ninety-four percent through the book (leaving only 21 pages to resolve it). Due to this high problem to page number ratio, the ending of this book was rushed. Extremely rushed. The resolution to one of the main conflicts of the book got a two sentence explanation. A two sentence explanation from an author that spent paragraphs describing food. I don’t have a problem with the content of the ending, I think it fits in well with the story, but I just wanted the ending to be more rich and have more details.
I am going to give this book 3 stars. My rating would have been much higher if it had not been for the rushed ending. I would have preferred a longer book to the ending that I got in this book. Certain things were completely glossed over, as I mentioned earlier. As a reader I want endings that are flushed out. I want all of the details, the feelings that Olivia went through when she learned about what this character did or her friend’s reaction when she told him what happened. Instead I got a couple of sentences about what happened. The only reason that my rating is as high as 3 stars is because of the fact that the plot and the descriptions were really good. I’m not going to recommend this book to anyone because the ending made me angry but if you want to give this book a shot, go for it!
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