I've always been a semi-secret fan of mystery books. Although I don't enjoy mysteries where everyone has been murdered or it's some deep dark mysterious thing where half the characters are either crying or deranged (seriously, those seem to be the only two options). Then there's that one character that knows everything, is not the bad guy, but still won't step forward because they're SCARED. ....pfft. I feel that mystery books for the most part just need to CALM DOWN.
With that in mind, here's an amazon summary, "The year is 1867, and seventeen-year-old Verity Boone is excited to return from Worcester, Massachusetts, to Catawissa, Pennsylvania, the hometown she left when she was just a baby. Now she will finally meet the fiancé she knows only through letters! Soon, however, she discovers two strangely caged graves . . . and learns that one of them is her own mother’s. Verity swears she’ll get to the bottom of why her mother was buried in “unhallowed ground” in this suspenseful teen mystery that swirls with rumors of witchcraft, buried gold from the days of the War of Independence, and even more shocking family secrets." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE
First and foremost, this book really wants to be a romance novel. It is, it's a love triangle, it's the strange sensation of growing up and discovering oneself.
Secondly, it's a mystery. I didn't mind the mystery so much because there were implied supernatural elements to it.
Thirdly, it started to be a combined confusing mix of emotionally fueled actions while flailing about in the mystery.
...I lost myself a little. Let me back up to the summary.
Verity is a 'proper' lady from the city who is very concerned with manners, the proper way of doing things, and what her fiance is truly like as she's only known him from letters. Upon meeting her fiance, she is devastated as he doesn't seem to be like the man from his letters at all and for some strange reason the town keeps whispering about her. She's a little huffy and doesn't know where to go when she meets the young doctor of the town who is kind to her and a bit of a flirt. Then one day as she's strolling through the town, she spots two caged graves outside of the church cemetery. Curiously, she approaches to find one of the graves belongs to her mother and the other to her aunt.
Suddenly, the whispers begin to make sense. Verity never had a real sense of who her mother was but comes across her diaries in the attic and begins to read through them in the hopes of finding out who she was.
Verity also makes more friends than foes making her way through the town, but the mystery of the caged graves goes deep into the heart of the town's beginnings.
Now, for me, the mystery element of the story had a halting sort of appeal to it as there were moments where I found it awesome, and moments where I had to sigh and roll my eyes at it.
However, the romance element of the story kept me going through the portion where I was rolling my eyes. Discovering Verity as a person and how she interacts with the town was wonderful (especially if you enjoy the intricacies of weird manners and etiquette).
Overall, I enjoyed the book.
Happy reading!
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