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Daughters of England #14
The Pool of St. Branok
Young Angelet is fascinated by the haunting rumors surrounding the Pool of St. Branok—superstitious tales of its cursed, bottomless waters. The innocent Cornish girl shares the ghostly story with Benedict Lansdon, the handsome, illegitimate grandson of a family friend, and promises to show him the spot. But tragedy strikes when they meet at the pool, and Angelet and Ben become complicit in a crime that could send Ben to the gallows.
Ben returns to Australia, but the pair feels bound by their terrible secret. After a whirlwind season in London, Angelet marries Gervaise Mandeville, a charming rogue with a weakness for gambling. As the casualties from the Crimean War mount, Gervaise decides to try his luck in the Australian gold rush. Angelet travels across the world with him, only to once again be ensnared in a fatal act of violence. Alone in the outback, Angelet faces her own day of reckoning from a long-ago crime—and gets a second chance at love.
Ben returns to Australia, but the pair feels bound by their terrible secret. After a whirlwind season in London, Angelet marries Gervaise Mandeville, a charming rogue with a weakness for gambling. As the casualties from the Crimean War mount, Gervaise decides to try his luck in the Australian gold rush. Angelet travels across the world with him, only to once again be ensnared in a fatal act of violence. Alone in the outback, Angelet faces her own day of reckoning from a long-ago crime—and gets a second chance at love.
410 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 2, 1987
49 people are currently reading
300 people want to read
About the author
Philippa Carr
100 books247 followersEleanor Alice Burford, Mrs. George Percival Hibbert was a British author of about 200 historical novels, most of them under the pen name Jean Plaidy which had sold 14 million copies by the time of her death. She chose to use various names because of the differences in subject matter between her books; the best-known, apart from Plaidy, are Victoria Holt (56 million) and Philippa Carr (3 million). Lesser known were the novels Hibbert published under her maiden name Eleanor Burford, or the pseudonyms of Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Anna Percival and Ellalice Tate. Many of her readers under one penname never suspected her other identities.
-Wikipedia
-Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
July 15, 2023
3.5 stars
Could have been cut down to much less than 400 pages, and the ending was pretty wimpy, but it kept me entertained enough.
Could have been cut down to much less than 400 pages, and the ending was pretty wimpy, but it kept me entertained enough.
September 7, 2022
I formerly rated the previous installment of the Daughters of England as the weakest novel in the series. I changed my mind after reading “The Pool of St. Branok”
Like with “Midsummer’s Eve”, the Australian section often reads like non-fiction travel writing, which is fine if you don’t mind such digressions, but I’d rather stick to the story.
Like the previous four books in the series, we have a plodding narrative with little action and lots of repetition. The repetition in this case occurs between Angel – the narrator – and Ben. Like with several other books in this series, they have almost identical conversations about their relationship – or the lack of one. Because the author has done this in several novels, we know what will happen, and aren’t surprised if an obstacle – that is, for example, a husband or wife – should conveniently die.
A few times, the author ruins the suspense with lines like these:
>And so innocently happy I rode out to the pool, not realizing that life was never going to be the same again.<
>There came one evening at the house in the square which was to change our lives, although I did not know it then.<
>I shall never forget that afternoon. During it I experienced some of the most harrowing hours I have ever known.<
While lines of this type often make for good novel openers, they fall flat when inserted halfway through a story. It robs all suspense because you know something will happen, and can usually predict what it'll be.
Like the Annora and Rolf relationship in the previous book, Angel and Ben first realise they love each other when the female is a child, and the male is a young man. I've read several novels by this author where a grown man has romantic feelings for a child. Writing as Jean Plaidy, for example, this author has a male character in "The Red Cloak" falling for a seven-year-old, whom he feels is older than her years, and he wants to marry her when she's of age. It's not so blatant as that in this novel, but it's still creepy in this context that an adult would want a child to grow up faster.
For example, Ben tells Angel: “I thought of you often … but as a little girl. I was attracted then … I knew there was something between us.” And later: “I love you, Angel. I have from the first. When you were a little girl … Oh why were you only nine years old when we first met?”
This author, including her works as Victoria Holt, has a tendency to have her heroines refer to one of the male characters by both names, which really irritates me. This novel has several *female* characters referred to by both names, most notable Grace Gilmore. This type of thing might not bother some people, but it grates on my nerves.
Another of this author's annoying traits is the overuse of reported speech. Reported speech is passive. Why not make it active by changing it to dialogue?
Regarding dialogue, however, at times several characters are speaking together, which becomes confusing when the dialogue attribution is tagged on at the end. I reached the stage where I had to check the end of the line first to see who’s speaking. Otherwise, you read a line thinking it’s the character who spoke before the previous one, only to sometimes find out it isn’t.
As for the characters, I feel that this cast is among the weakest in the series so far, though better than in “Midsummer’s Eve”.
In short, I consider “The Pool of St. Branock” the least impressive of Books 1–14 in the Daughters of England series. The ending is unsatisfying and anti-climatic in the extreme.
Like with “Midsummer’s Eve”, the Australian section often reads like non-fiction travel writing, which is fine if you don’t mind such digressions, but I’d rather stick to the story.
Like the previous four books in the series, we have a plodding narrative with little action and lots of repetition. The repetition in this case occurs between Angel – the narrator – and Ben. Like with several other books in this series, they have almost identical conversations about their relationship – or the lack of one. Because the author has done this in several novels, we know what will happen, and aren’t surprised if an obstacle – that is, for example, a husband or wife – should conveniently die.
A few times, the author ruins the suspense with lines like these:
>And so innocently happy I rode out to the pool, not realizing that life was never going to be the same again.<
>There came one evening at the house in the square which was to change our lives, although I did not know it then.<
>I shall never forget that afternoon. During it I experienced some of the most harrowing hours I have ever known.<
While lines of this type often make for good novel openers, they fall flat when inserted halfway through a story. It robs all suspense because you know something will happen, and can usually predict what it'll be.
Like the Annora and Rolf relationship in the previous book, Angel and Ben first realise they love each other when the female is a child, and the male is a young man. I've read several novels by this author where a grown man has romantic feelings for a child. Writing as Jean Plaidy, for example, this author has a male character in "The Red Cloak" falling for a seven-year-old, whom he feels is older than her years, and he wants to marry her when she's of age. It's not so blatant as that in this novel, but it's still creepy in this context that an adult would want a child to grow up faster.
For example, Ben tells Angel: “I thought of you often … but as a little girl. I was attracted then … I knew there was something between us.” And later: “I love you, Angel. I have from the first. When you were a little girl … Oh why were you only nine years old when we first met?”
This author, including her works as Victoria Holt, has a tendency to have her heroines refer to one of the male characters by both names, which really irritates me. This novel has several *female* characters referred to by both names, most notable Grace Gilmore. This type of thing might not bother some people, but it grates on my nerves.
Another of this author's annoying traits is the overuse of reported speech. Reported speech is passive. Why not make it active by changing it to dialogue?
Regarding dialogue, however, at times several characters are speaking together, which becomes confusing when the dialogue attribution is tagged on at the end. I reached the stage where I had to check the end of the line first to see who’s speaking. Otherwise, you read a line thinking it’s the character who spoke before the previous one, only to sometimes find out it isn’t.
As for the characters, I feel that this cast is among the weakest in the series so far, though better than in “Midsummer’s Eve”.
In short, I consider “The Pool of St. Branock” the least impressive of Books 1–14 in the Daughters of England series. The ending is unsatisfying and anti-climatic in the extreme.
February 19, 2024
I enjoyed this book, but I also found it one of the weaker entries in the Daughters of England / Cornwall Saga series. This story is about Angelet "Angel", daughter of Annora and Rolf. As per usual, previous occurrences are rehashed for the benefit of any readers who weren't aware they were in the middle-end of a sprawling series (and Fawcett didn't really go out of their way to advertise it as one, as best I can tell). The family tree is missing from the book once again; it would have been helpful to have even an abbreviated version, especially since we hear a few times how "complicated" that tree is!
Our protagonist Angel suffers a traumatic event in her childhood which is exacerbated by the actions of a selfish, creepy adult who should have been looking out for her and made dumb decisions that don't make sense to me and which felt like they got shrugged off later. All of the romantic prospects in Angel's life are irritating / unlikable / trash with the exception of one who's just there to make you guess at things for a hot second, I think. There's a prominent woman who also annoyed me, and her real story was glaringly obvious. Angel's life in Australia was interesting, but the "suspense" dragged out with little drama in between to keep the spark going. The ending was a complete fizzle - for once I didn't correctly guess the big reveal, because it was far more dull than a usual Carr ending! Not a total dud in that it kept my attention and I love following this series. However, if you aren't trying to complete the whole series or if you aren't a big Carr / Holt / Hibbert fan, you can probably skip it. Most of what happened here is going to be recapped in the next book, anyway. Speaking of which, I should note I think this book and the next two form something of a "trilogy" in the series centered around the Cadorson estate and the St. Branok's pool.
Our protagonist Angel suffers a traumatic event in her childhood which is exacerbated by the actions of a selfish, creepy adult who should have been looking out for her and made dumb decisions that don't make sense to me and which felt like they got shrugged off later. All of the romantic prospects in Angel's life are irritating / unlikable / trash with the exception of one who's just there to make you guess at things for a hot second, I think. There's a prominent woman who also annoyed me, and her real story was glaringly obvious. Angel's life in Australia was interesting, but the "suspense" dragged out with little drama in between to keep the spark going. The ending was a complete fizzle - for once I didn't correctly guess the big reveal, because it was far more dull than a usual Carr ending! Not a total dud in that it kept my attention and I love following this series. However, if you aren't trying to complete the whole series or if you aren't a big Carr / Holt / Hibbert fan, you can probably skip it. Most of what happened here is going to be recapped in the next book, anyway. Speaking of which, I should note I think this book and the next two form something of a "trilogy" in the series centered around the Cadorson estate and the St. Branok's pool.
March 18, 2021
This book was a "hand-me-down" from my dear mother-in-law and I loved it. The characters gathered me in and took me on their life's adventure on two continents. Set in the long ago I found the challenges they faced are still faced today and I found the take away moral of the story to be soooo satisfying. Thank you Philippa Carr (who is also Victoria Holt). I will be reading the others in your series DAUGHTERS OF ENGLAND.
October 1, 2017
Too much rehashing the exact same scenes. Too much of the main character being dumb-- even given the fact that 'back then' women weren't as independent as they are now. Too much endless discussion about the same topics.
December 23, 2025
An overstuffed entry in the "Daughters of England" series, "The Pool of St. Branok" simply has too much going on. It ultimately seems to fizzle out under the weight of everything Carr is trying to accomplish. Concentrating on Angelet, the daughter of Annora (heroine of "Midsummer's Eve"), the novel opens with childhood trauma and its potential repercussions (for two books in a row, Carr relies on the trope of a child coming into contact with human evil), which would be enough for one novel--but instead Carr throws in a gambling subplot that she already did five generations earlier in "Will You Love Me in September?", then devolves into Victorian political intrigue and a final, strangely flat climax that also takes elements of "The Return of the Gypsy," two books previously, as well as "Voices in a Haunted Room." Meanwhile, another Australian episode takes up a huge part of the book, while one subplot clearly shows that she was still thinking about some of the research she'd done for her recent Victoria Holt novel, "Secret for a Nightingale." As said in a review of the series' previous volume, Carr is incapable of writing a bad novel but at this stage in the series, the novels start to slog and lose steam, populated with an uninteresting branch of the family doing things that seem to be remnants of the authors' other pseudonym.
June 26, 2021
I am not sure how to feel about this one. It's like 3.75 for me.. There was a small lull in the middle but otherwise there was a lot going on with multiple characters coming and going. Angel is the main character and in Carr Fashion she married the wrong guy and then wondered about the other guy ever since. This book was a little different than others as there were quite a few more sordid story arcs happening and there was a gothic mystery feel to it as well. This is what made it read so well even if we had an inkling that there was more to the Grace character than what she portrayed. While some of the conversations were repeated incessantly I still loved the no holding back kind of writing here but the ending was just like boom here's a quick door in your face to end it.
May 22, 2023
This was a truly outstanding work of historical fiction. People complain about long novels primarily because they are boring. This novel is on the longer side and I got to the end and wanted it to go on. It was truly remarkable with authentic twists and turns that kept me going until the end. Twice I thought I knew who the guilty person was and was wrong. Love this book, and of course, this author.
September 13, 2017
One of the better ones in the series.
April 19, 2022
2.5 stars
June 15, 2025
Did not finish
November 30, 2014
While most of this book was enjoyable, I could have done without the endless pages where Angelet and Benedict rehash the same conversation almost verbatim concerning their future together. Angelet just says that she's married and there's no hope while Ben says he loves her and she should just get a divorce to be with him. His constant pestering annoyed me and honestly I liked him less because of it. Angelet's choice at the end of the book was frustrating after a whole book of me routing for "the other guy."
July 15, 2016
This was not one of Carr's better books. The story meanders this way and that and doesn't seem to tie in the characters relationships to each other until the very last chapter, which had the most ridiculous ending. Almost as if the author got tired of writing the story and just finished it up in five minutes. All other subplots left hanging. Two stars because of the Victorian England setting which is always enjoyable to read about.
April 13, 2014
Part of a series of mother to daughter generations stories telling the history of England from Henry VIII to WW II. Fabulous to read them all in order. Each one is a gem; each is surprising and well written.
This setting and Pool figure in three of the generations, and three of the books. This is the first. Set in Cornwall.
This setting and Pool figure in three of the generations, and three of the books. This is the first. Set in Cornwall.
March 17, 2012
I love this series and while this one is not one of my all time favorites, it's still an interesting story with a surprising twist at the end. I recommend it to all those who like gothic, historical, romantic fiction.
June 22, 2011
book 14
August 2, 2011
Angelet is the heroine in this edition. I like the fact that Annora named her after an ancestress, and that they refer to the family journals which are stored at Eversleigh.
September 9, 2013
good story with a surprise ending.
August 21, 2016
Enjoyable story, too much repetition.
Currently reading
August 4, 2011I love what I have read so far...Great guide to British countryside. More later when I finish
March 4, 2012
Tedious mish-mash of storylines from previous Victoria Holt line stories.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews