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Windover
Secretly engaged to her handsome tutor, now on a world tour, Kathryn of Windover Hall finds herself abandoned at Windover with her ailing mother and domineering stepfather when her lover fails to return from his journey.
266 pages, Hardcover
First published April 2, 1992
68 people want to read
About the author
Jane Aiken Hodge
54 books81 followersJane Aiken Hodge was born in the USA, brought up in the UK and read English at Oxford. She received a master's degree from Radcliffe College, Harvard University.
Before her books became her living she worked as a civil servant, journalist, publishers' reader and a reviewer.
She has written lives of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer as well as a book about women in the Regency period, PASSION AND PRINCIPLE. But her main output has been over twenty historical novels set in the eighteenth century, including POLONAISE, THE LOST GARDEN, and SAVANNAH PURCHASE, the beloved third volume of a trilogy set during and after the American War of Independence. More recently she has written novels for Severn House Publishers.
She enjoys the borderland between mystery and novel, is pleased to be classed as a feminist writer, and is glad that there is neither a glass ceiling nor a retiring age in the writers' world. She was the daughter of Conrad Aiken and sister of Joan Aiken.
Before her books became her living she worked as a civil servant, journalist, publishers' reader and a reviewer.
She has written lives of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer as well as a book about women in the Regency period, PASSION AND PRINCIPLE. But her main output has been over twenty historical novels set in the eighteenth century, including POLONAISE, THE LOST GARDEN, and SAVANNAH PURCHASE, the beloved third volume of a trilogy set during and after the American War of Independence. More recently she has written novels for Severn House Publishers.
She enjoys the borderland between mystery and novel, is pleased to be classed as a feminist writer, and is glad that there is neither a glass ceiling nor a retiring age in the writers' world. She was the daughter of Conrad Aiken and sister of Joan Aiken.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 20, 2015
Wow. My first ONE STAR.
I have suffered through 264 pages of misery. On page 265 I laughed. What should have, at any other time been a touching moment was laughable, it had come too late for me to care.
While I read this I kept remembering The Long Masquerade, which had a rather dark beginning. This book was like that the whole way through. Imagine if Oliver Fay in The Long Masquerade was not gotten rid of 1/3 of the way through. Imagine that you were stuck with him for over 65% of the book and when he was gone, it got worse instead of better. (Because it did, we were stuck with Kathryn's jerk of a husband allll they way to 71%)
Then the author made her biggest mistake yet; she said Kathryn missed him. What did she miss? Beatings? Indifferenc? I'm sorry, but since she never loved him, he never treated her well and she only liked him at first, I think that highly unlikely. It felt like the author was making excuses for him. Like he was some poor little mad thing that couldn't help himself.
I also find it odd that Thomas should go from a spineless snake to a man who beats his wife. Granted that was encouraged by a Hellfire Preacher to remove the "sin" in her heart. Like how would he or Thomas know what's in her heart? Thomas never took the time to find out! So in his death they say he was out of his mind, but why was it so sudden? Why wasn't there a build up to his craziness, it all happened in a few months over a few pages!
Kathryn then decides to become an author, right after Marie Antoinette is guillotined. I feel like this is two books "smushed into one" as Bree says. One was written set in Victorian England when a lady authors were beginning to be more readily published. But it's during the French revolution, and Kathryn is going to try publishing a book and write a newspaper column. WITH a man. And run a bank. What?! That wasn't exactly something you could just jump into and be excepted. But apparently you could…
Bottom line: I hated this book.
PG-13 (I'd say maybe 14/15 and up?) because wife beating is mentioned, marital rape seems to be an issue and because this book was way depressing. Swears are bs and D's and only about six in all. Violence was never shown to the reader, except when someone got knocked in the head twice. It was all black. You aren't told anything.
Which brings me to something else I hated. The Hellfire Preacher Jackson, told Thomas he "knew of a sin in his past which was disgusting." It involved his cousin. But we are never told anything else about it. What did they do? Were they torturing frogs or was it suggested that they were gay? If they author had seen fit to tell us which, then I might have been more inclined to agree with the madness verdict they gave to Thomas. Or I'd at least have understood him! But no, like everything else the author tired of it just "was never mentioned again". Arrrgh!
Like Kathryn running for her life, by the end of the book she was still in danger BUT, now she had a man who loved her and that somehow chased the would be murderer away…
I wouldn't give this book to anyone: to the trash it goes! It's hardly even a romance and not at all romantic.
I have suffered through 264 pages of misery. On page 265 I laughed. What should have, at any other time been a touching moment was laughable, it had come too late for me to care.
While I read this I kept remembering The Long Masquerade, which had a rather dark beginning. This book was like that the whole way through. Imagine if Oliver Fay in The Long Masquerade was not gotten rid of 1/3 of the way through. Imagine that you were stuck with him for over 65% of the book and when he was gone, it got worse instead of better. (Because it did, we were stuck with Kathryn's jerk of a husband allll they way to 71%)
Then the author made her biggest mistake yet; she said Kathryn missed him. What did she miss? Beatings? Indifferenc? I'm sorry, but since she never loved him, he never treated her well and she only liked him at first, I think that highly unlikely. It felt like the author was making excuses for him. Like he was some poor little mad thing that couldn't help himself.
I also find it odd that Thomas should go from a spineless snake to a man who beats his wife. Granted that was encouraged by a Hellfire Preacher to remove the "sin" in her heart. Like how would he or Thomas know what's in her heart? Thomas never took the time to find out! So in his death they say he was out of his mind, but why was it so sudden? Why wasn't there a build up to his craziness, it all happened in a few months over a few pages!
Kathryn then decides to become an author, right after Marie Antoinette is guillotined. I feel like this is two books "smushed into one" as Bree says. One was written set in Victorian England when a lady authors were beginning to be more readily published. But it's during the French revolution, and Kathryn is going to try publishing a book and write a newspaper column. WITH a man. And run a bank. What?! That wasn't exactly something you could just jump into and be excepted. But apparently you could…
Bottom line: I hated this book.
PG-13 (I'd say maybe 14/15 and up?) because wife beating is mentioned, marital rape seems to be an issue and because this book was way depressing. Swears are bs and D's and only about six in all. Violence was never shown to the reader, except when someone got knocked in the head twice. It was all black. You aren't told anything.
Which brings me to something else I hated. The Hellfire Preacher Jackson, told Thomas he "knew of a sin in his past which was disgusting." It involved his cousin. But we are never told anything else about it. What did they do? Were they torturing frogs or was it suggested that they were gay? If they author had seen fit to tell us which, then I might have been more inclined to agree with the madness verdict they gave to Thomas. Or I'd at least have understood him! But no, like everything else the author tired of it just "was never mentioned again". Arrrgh!
Like Kathryn running for her life, by the end of the book she was still in danger BUT, now she had a man who loved her and that somehow chased the would be murderer away…
I wouldn't give this book to anyone: to the trash it goes! It's hardly even a romance and not at all romantic.
July 24, 2015
This was not what I expected. I rather expected the more usual romantic French Revolution or Napoleonic era, similar to a Heyer Regency romance maybe? Nope. This was more stilted, but at the same time, more convoluted in strange characterizations. But it was also odd, neither fish nor fowl. I would not call this a beach read as others have. It's not "light" enough at all. Our heroine seemed "stuck" in her affective ability. I can't explain it well. That I do know. But it is not the mood at all of a typical romance genre.
But as much as she seemed to have some depth in her thinking ability, it just didn't seem to translate into her "in love" capacity. Or in a definition of what that becomes in "real life". And it's not like the constant holder/owner of all her prime affective feelings was able to be reciprocal. At times it got "bodice ripper" but at others it seemed nearly insipid. In other words, the flawed are bad beyond understanding and often cartoonish. And the ending was contorted and not easily believable.
Yet, I almost gave it 4 stars- just because I had NO IDEA where it was going next. Obviously, I seldom read romance genre and usually expect simple and happy ending within that group. With the money always ending up there and quite available at the end for our cozy duo. LOL!
This one was odd, dated- and yet our girl was so fixed it was not something that is even close to similar works published post 2000. So overall, I really enjoyed it and wondered what could possibly happen next. 3.5 star with highly stilted language. Telling you what you needed to know about the physical, but not more than you needed to know. Moderns always tell you way too much and make it about as interesting as a OB/GYN exam.
But as much as she seemed to have some depth in her thinking ability, it just didn't seem to translate into her "in love" capacity. Or in a definition of what that becomes in "real life". And it's not like the constant holder/owner of all her prime affective feelings was able to be reciprocal. At times it got "bodice ripper" but at others it seemed nearly insipid. In other words, the flawed are bad beyond understanding and often cartoonish. And the ending was contorted and not easily believable.
Yet, I almost gave it 4 stars- just because I had NO IDEA where it was going next. Obviously, I seldom read romance genre and usually expect simple and happy ending within that group. With the money always ending up there and quite available at the end for our cozy duo. LOL!
This one was odd, dated- and yet our girl was so fixed it was not something that is even close to similar works published post 2000. So overall, I really enjoyed it and wondered what could possibly happen next. 3.5 star with highly stilted language. Telling you what you needed to know about the physical, but not more than you needed to know. Moderns always tell you way too much and make it about as interesting as a OB/GYN exam.
October 28, 2021
Total bore with extremely slow pacing and poor character development.
June 25, 2015
Austen setting/Dickens coincidences...a slightly predictable historical romance -- Britain at the time of the French revolution. A beach-y read, if there ever was one.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews