I got this book from my Mom when I went to visit her in Oregon last month. It belonged to my Grandma Betty.

It was definitely a story that improved as it went along. It started out very slow and was full of melodrama from beginning to end. However, once mysterious things started happening to the main characters in the story, it became more interesting; and, while I did figure out the main culprit before he/she/it was revealed, there was a little twist I wasn't expecting.

I could easily picture this as a cheesy 1960s budget film, but I did enjoy the bit of fluff after a very long travel home from England this past weekend. ( )

I have been a lifelong Victoria Holt fan, and as I re-read this book, I remember why. She has a twist of a phrase, a view of life that endures and draws a reader in. Is it improbable the main character would be where she was? Absolutely. That she could hold a position that seemed, at best, contrived? Despite that, you walk alongside, seeing things through this character's eyes and feeling her emotions. Danger lurks at every corner. Who killed Caroline's sister? Who killed Napier's wife? Why are they trying to kill Caroline? Suspects around every corner bring you to the satisfying conclusion.

Ms. Holt's stories continue to entertain, even all these years after her death. ( )

My husband recently took me book shopping for my birthday and in a moment of nostalgia, I bought a vintage copy of Victoria Holt's The Shivering Sands. And let me tell you, it was the best birthday present I gave myself. I truly, thoroughly, enjoyed it and I've had a book-hangover from it all week. I've read at least one of Holt's books when I was younger but I have no idea which one it might have been. I know that I won't forget this one! I actually tried to slow the experience down and just revel in it for awhile. Perhaps my favorite book this year.

Let me paint the picture for you. An old family manse, sitting on an ocean-side cliff, overlooking several galleons half-sunk in the quicksand. The family? Just a shell of a man, grieving the suicide of his wife, the death of his golden boy at the hands of his other son, and the few family-relations who remain. There's the auntie who paints and predicts the future, the vicar's wife who tries to create the future she wants for her family, oh, and the ghost. That's right. No one knows if the spirit is one of the lost family or of the Roman remains recently found on the estate. And into this framework steps our heroine, not necessarily a governess but a music teacher and she has her own secrets. Like the battle between the ocean and the sands, each interlude between the family and the pianist reveals more tragedy and more treasure.
If you enjoy Gothic romance and Byronic heroes, do yourself a favor and read The Shivering Sands. ( )

Caroline takes the post of music teacher at Lovat Stacy to secretly try to find out why her sister disappeared but I can't say she seems to do much about it. She is terrible at keeping her secret and hardly seems to investigate at all, which is fine because it seems the main point is for her to fall for yet another Gothic romance bad boy. Maybe I am getting old but the apparently rotten and evil man who is just misunderstood and needs the love of a good woman trope has worn a bit thin for me. There were some good parts but the red herrings were a bit thick and the final reveal came a bit out of nowhere, with plenty of loose ends still left behind. Yet, I still keep reading these Victoria Holts because they are exactly what I think they will be.

“Those who seek after my life lay snares for me; those who strive to hurt me speak of my ruin and plot treachery all the day long.” Psalm 38:12

“It took me some weeks to recover from the shock of my experience. Everyone was most concerned for me, which was flattering, but I just could not rid myself of the notion that one of these people who now enquired so solicitously after my health, had deliberately tried to kill me.”
~ “The Shivering Sands”

It’s a romance, although it’s mysterious and it becomes something of a murder mystery; first one girl disappears and then another, and finally the heroine herself falls into danger. There is something pleasing about this, since we are all mortal and usually ill at ease at the bottom (see the above), and on top of that it feels like we make but little progress. To face the danger, to solve the puzzle and come to the end of things, is what calls men to war and the amateur sleuth to solve her case.

…. I also maybe get that there was something that Alice—“noble”, intellectual—had to learn from Allegra—“happy”, passionate…. that maybe they were the same, that they both came from love, and that they were not just opposites, which is how I usually think about them…. Most people are too much like Allegra, grasping at passion. The intellectual life lived pure and unaided and for the sake of status, though, can be a scary thing…. not a little destructive, and very hateful to me.

…. Well, I never knew, till now.

…. Yes, there is something that the mind doesn’t learn by itself, and without that, we are all murderers.