Status Updates From The Curse of Morton Abbey

So many mysteries!

I’m really hoping Joe is the Dickon character and won’t turn out to be a horrible villain!

In first person and much more gothic! Very intriguing. Reminds me of Victoria Holt.

Finally a bit more promising, and not so cut-and-paste from the Secret Garden. The Dickon character (Joe) is seemingly shifty, and it appears more likely that the FMC will go for the Colin-stand-in (Nick).

I’ve read that this book is a combo of the Secret Garden and Jane Eyre. I’ll readily confess that I DNF’d JE in high school, so I can’t speak to the Brontë-ness of this book, but the parallels to SG are getting to be a bit too much. (Vaughan=Mary, Nick=Colin, Joe=Dickon, the Yorkshire setting, etc). Not sure if it’s as obvious to most, but I’ve read SG countless times, & it’s weirdly distracting.