The Beloved Girls by Harriet Evans

 

From Goodreads

'It's a funny old house. They have this ceremony every summer.... There's an old chapel, in the grounds of the house. Half-derelict. The Hunters keep bees in there. Every year, on the same day, the family processes to the chapel. They open the combs, taste the honey. Take it back to the house. 'Half for them' - my father winced, as though he had bitten down on a sore tooth. 'And half for us.'

Catherine, a successful barrister, vanishes from a train station on the eve of her anniversary. Is it because she saw a figure - someone she believed long dead? Or was it a shadow cast by her troubled, fractured mind?

The answer lies buried in the past. It lies in the events of the hot seismic summer of 1989, at Vanes - a mysterious West Country manor house - where a young girl, Jane Lestrange, arrives to stay with the gilded, grand Hunter family, and where a devastating tragedy will unfold. Over the summer, as an ancient family ritual looms closer, Janey falls for each member of the family in turn. She and Kitty, the eldest daughter of the house, will forge a bond that decades later is still shaping the present....

'We need the bees to survive, and they need us to survive. Once you understand that, you understand the history of Vanes, you understand our family.' 

My thoughts

This was a Library Reading Group read.  I wasn't sure how it was going to be received by the group as it's not the style of read that we have read in the past.  Sadly, the group wasn't that impressed.

I found it an average read that kept me reading as I did want to know what happened.  I feel that it tackled some serious issues at points and they were handled well.  I did however feel that it was a tad overlong and I felt that I got lost at times, wondering what was happening.

It was a dual timeframe story that jumped around.  At it's heart was a large manor house that the Hunter family lived in, when a young girl Jane Lestrange comes to stay with them things happen that will impact on the futures of all the inhabitants of Vanes.

To find out what happens and how it impacts on everyone, you will have to grab a copy of this to read.  If you do, please come back to let me know what you think of it.