The Daughters Of Red Hill Hall by Kathleen McGurl

I found it interesting that our modern day heroine, Gemma, has a penchant for Barbara Erskine novels as this book is trying very hard to slot into the same genre.  Parallel tales of history and the modern world; in this case the pre-Victorian and Victorian worlds alongside our own.  Unfortunately, Ms McGurl does not manage it with quite as much aplomb.

The story centres around the discovery at a small Bridhampton Museum of a pair of ornate duelling pistols and then weaves the story of Sarah and Rebecca and their lives at Red Hill Hall with Gemma and her best friend Naomi in the modern day town.  It is clear from the outset that Gemma is the Rebecca character and Naomi the less-salubrious Sarah and the author invites you to make comparisons between the pairs of girls from the outset.

The tale itself is a good one, dealing with a range of emotions and situations but mainly centering around duplicitousness, envy and just how far some people will go to get what they feel they deserve at the expense of all around them.  It moves along at a good pace and the swapping between the historical girls and the modern day ones works well.  Sadly, the modern day version is far less interesting and absorbing than the historical sections.  Whilst Sarah and Rebecca live on the pages and you get a real sense of complicated human desires from both characters their equivalents of Gemma and Naomi are far less well developed and appear to be fairly flat and uncomplicated.  This led to me rushing those sectiosn to get to the intrigue back in Victoria's early reign.

Not a bad book and an enjoyable enough read just needed a lot more "oomph" on the character front.

**Review originally published February 2nd, 2018**