Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

Rebecca

by Daphne Du Maurier

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...Working as a lady's companion, the heroine of REBECCA learns her place. Her future looks bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Max de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding housekeeper, Mrs Danvers...Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, REBECCA is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.

Reviewed by Leigha on

1 of 5 stars

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The newest Mrs. de Winter marries a man with a past in this terrible classic.

What fresh hell is this? For as long as I can remember, I have been excited about reading Rebecca. I always thought I would read it at the right time and the right place in my life, but I’ve discovered there would be no right time or place for it. It was plain idiotic. Why does the heroine have no name other than Mrs. de Winter? Why in blazes does the novel spend a tedious amount of time on conversations between the various characters about absolutely nothing, but then ends with a dramatic cliffhanger? Why the hell do Maxim and thy-new-wife-who-shall-never-be-named like each other let alone love each other? What in the hell was the point of it all? I was expecting a home run. I was expecting something unique and twisty, not monotonous conversations and a mind-numbing dive into a fragile woman’s psyche. I might have given it two stars as the narration was well done, but that ending enraged me to no end.

tl;dr Tedious details, a problematic relationship, and a terrible ending had me hating this book until the bitter end.

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Reading updates

  • 13 September, 2020: Started reading
  • 13 September, 2020: on page 0 out of 416 0%
  • 29 October, 2020: Finished reading
  • 29 November, 2020: Reviewed