Where Ivy Dares to Grow by Marielle Thompson

 

WHERE IVY DARES TO GROW is a really interesting gothic romance about a woman named Saoirse who is engaged to a man named Jack, who comes from the Page family: a titled family that own a massive estate called Langdon, which has a rich and stately history. They are the most pretentious group of fucks that you could ever hope not to meet, and have even developed a cute little phrase for the things that they deem worthy of their time and notice: "Page important."

When Jack brings her home to tend to his dying mother, Saoirse realizes how "Page unimportant" she is, as she watches her husband-to-be fall out of love with her and treat her like a burden, not speaking a word in her defense when his parents castigate her for her worthless history PhD, for being too high maintenance and neurotic, and basically just treating her like so much dust on their damask curtains.

Pretty soon, though, strange things start happening. Saoirse starts to see shadows and strange things that shouldn't be there. She starts losing track of time. And then she meets a man named Theo, who is Jack's ancestor. But she likes him so much more than she ever did Jack. Which begs the question: is it really cheating to sleep with your fiance's ancestor's ghost? WHAT A PREMISE. Marielle Thompson, I love you.

This book got panned pretty heavily on Goodreads but I actually liked most of it. The writing is beautiful. Some people didn't like the prose but Thompson is trying to emulate the quintessential gothic novel. Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart, they all wrote like this. And the references to Jane Eyre-- this was intentional. Even though this book is set in 1994, it feels timeless, kind of straddling the various timelines like Langdon in this book. So in that sense, I think this book was actually quite successful in what it set out to do.

The love story was eh. I thought it was inoffensive, but I didn't feel much chemistry between the leads. It was still very beautifully written, but the middle really dragged because that's when she really starts to set up things between Saoirse and Theo. The beginning was the best and the ending was surprising and satisfying. I also liked the afterword where the author talked about her own mental illness, and how she never saw good representation of herself in media, so writing Saoirse with depersonalization-derealization disorder was actually quite cathartic for her.

3 out of 5 stars