Doubting Abbey

by Samantha Tonge

[Leah]

When Samantha Tonge emailed me and asked if I’d like to review her debut novel Doubting Abbey, it took me a while to say yes as I wasn’t 100% sure I’d have the time to fit the novel in with so many other ebooks to review. But I managed to clear out all of my other review ebooks and I was so pleased to say yes to Doubting Abbey. Especially after I saw the gorgeous book cover, a cover that rivals Lindsey Kelk’s I Heart novels.

Doubting Abbey is a Downton Abbey inspired novel – can’t you tell from the title? It’s proper posh, well it is when Gemma is being Abbey, not so much when she’s being herself, but more on that later. The novel is taking advantage of the fact that Downton Abbey is so popular and that people are loving posh people and seeing what happens behind the scenes in posh families. In Doubting Abbey, Gemma finds herself impersonating her best friend Abbey in a bid to help Abbey’s family win Million Dollar Mansion, a reality TV show pitting two stately homes against each other to win a million dollars. Gemma hopes it will be a cake walk, but impersonating someone is harder than she thinks, especially when someone rumbles her secret. Not only that, but she finds herself having untoward feelings for Edward, the Earl’s son. Can Gemma keep her secret to the end to help Applebridge Hall win the million dollars or will it all come out in the wash?

I was torn over Doubting Abbey. I did like it, it was very Downton inspired (though I don’t watch Downton myself). I loved the whole impersonation aspect, I liked Gemma when she was being Abbey, I loved the characters at Applebridge Hall, but Gemma as a narrator really annoyed me. She was such a lovely person, but she’s super repetitive and her use of the word “mega” bordered on common. Everything in Gemma’s life in mega – things were “mega” cool, people were “mega”, and it just didn’t work at all. I get that she isn’t posh, but she also isn’t that common and she sounded common as muck. Especially with the use of the word “mega” and “amaaaaaaaazin'” (which was spelt exactly as I’ve typed it). Yep, I bet people work like that, but it just doesn’t come across in book form and just sounded awful.

Apart from my narration irritationjs, I did like the book. I really loved getting to know the Earl, and Edward, and all the “downstairs” staff. It was a lovely look into a life I’ll never experience myself. One of my favourite parts of the book was when Gemma reunited some folks who were taken away from their parents during the war. The effort put into that was fabulous and the tales were so sweet and touching. The whole novel was quite cute, I could have just done without the common narration, I now have a massive aversion to the word “mega”. I will read more from Samantha Tonge, as she is a good storyteller, I just found the narration terribly common. But other than that, it was a good tale.