"Susan Wyler's contemporary take on a classic love story is utterly beguiling. Solsbury Hill is a gorgeously well-written tale of a fraught love affair that takes you from New York to the wild gothic setting of the Yorkshire moors."—Fiona Neill, author of Slummy Mummy and What the Nanny Saw
The windswept moors of England, a grand rustic estate, and a love story of one woman caught between two men who love her powerfully—all inspired by Emily Bronte’s beloved classic, Wuthering Heights. Solsbury Hill brings the legend of Catherine and Heathcliff, and that of their mysterious creator herself, into a contemporary love story that unlocks the past.
When a surprise call from a dying aunt brings twenty-something New Yorker Eleanor Abbott to the Yorkshire moors, and the family estate she is about to inherit, she finds a world beyond anything she might have expected. Having left behind an American fiance, here Eleanor meets Meadowscarp MacLeod—a young man who challenges and changes her. Here too she encounters the presence of Bronte herself and discovers a family legacy they may share.
With winds powerful enough to carve stone and bend trees, the moors are another world where time and space work differently. Remanants of the past are just around a craggy, windswept corner. For Eleanor, this means ancestors and a devastating romantic history that bears on her own life, on the history of the novel Wuthering Heights, and on the destinies of all who live in its shadow.
I was approved of an ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. This review in its entirety was originally posted at caffeinatedlife.net: http://www.caffeinatedlife.net/blog/2014/03/26/review-solsbury-hill/
Solsbury Hill had a promising premise: wild moors, an old estate, family secrets. Indeed Eleanor’s experiences throughout the novel really captures the whirlwind of revelations and a change of pace that she greatly needed given the circumstances she found herself in at the start of the story. But despite of the intrigue, the novel failed to truly capture my attention or garner my sympathy for the main character. While I appreciated the quick pace of the novel, after a while I found that the story moved a little too quicky, with some scenes feeling far too brief for me to establish an understanding with Eleanor’s situation.
Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is used as a framework for the story but it felt almost unnecessary; while I understood Eleanor’s crossroads situation, I thought the decision before her was a lot clearer as opposed to dragging it out the way it was in the story.
Solsbury Hill does give a sense of location–the moors, the quiet English countryside life–and the mystery about the estate was interesting enough to keep me tuned in to the end. Otherwise I never really connected with the characters or the situations that they found themselves in.
